Install and Configure Ansible Tower on CentOS 7 / RHEL 7/8

How To Install Ansible Tower on RHEL 8/7 & CentOS 7/8?. In this article, we will cover the installation, configuration, and usage of Ansible Tower on RHEL 7 / CentOS 7 server. Ansible has been dominating as the standard tool for automating Infrastructure and Applications deployments in enterprises. Ansible is a simple, powerful, and easy to learn as compared to other configuration management tools such as Chef & Puppet.

For Ubuntu / Debian: How To Install Ansible AWX on Ubuntu 18.04 / Debian 10

Ansible exists in two standards:

• Ansible Core – Provides Ansible runtime for executing playbooks.
• Ansible Tower – Provides management, visibility, job scheduling, credentials, RBAC, auditing/compliance e.t.c.

By installing Ansible Tower, Ansible core will be installed as a dependency. Below are the steps you’ll use to install Ansible Tower on a CentOS 7 server.

Step 1: Update system and add EPEL repository

We need the EPEL repository for this installation. Update your CentOS 7 system and add EPEL repository.

sudo yum -y update
sudo yum -y install epel-release

For CentOS / RHEL 8, use:

How to enable EPEL Repository on CentOS / RHEL 8

Ansible Tower uses Ansible playbook to deploy itself so we also need Ansible installed.

sudo yum -y install ansible vim curl

For CentOS / RHEL 8, you can also check How to Install and Configure Ansible on RHEL 8 / CentOS 8

Step 2: Download Ansible Tower archive

Download the latest Ansible Tower release.

mkdir /tmp/tower && cd  /tmp/tower
curl -k -O https://releases.ansible.com/ansible-tower/setup/ansible-tower-setup-latest.tar.gz

Extract downloaded archive.

tar xvf ansible-tower-setup-latest.tar.gz

Step 3: Install Ansible Tower

Navigate to the created directory.

cd ansible-tower-setup*/

Edit inventory file to set required credentials.

$ vim inventory
...........................
[tower]
localhost ansible_connection=local

[database]

[all:vars]
admin_password='AdminPassword'

pg_host=''
pg_port=''

pg_database='awx'
pg_username='awx'
pg_password='PgStrongPassword'

rabbitmq_username=tower
rabbitmq_password='RabbitmqPassword'
rabbitmq_cookie=cookiemonster

# Isolated Tower nodes automatically generate an RSA key for authentication;
# To disable this behavior, set this value to false
# isolated_key_generation=true

When done, start installation of Ansible Tower on CentOS 7.

sudo ./setup.sh

This will invoke Ansible playbook to install Ansible Tower on CentOS 7. If successful, the message like this should show at the end.

Step 4: Configure Ansible Tower

You can configure Ansible Tower using:

• CLI
• RESTful API
• Web UI

We will use the Web UI since this is the most preferred method by most new Ansible Tower users. Open your favorite browser point to your Ansible Tower server IP or hostname via https protocol.

Login as admin user and password set in the inventory file.

Once you are logged in, you need to configure Ansible Tower license. Browse to the license file and accept the terms. If you don’t have a license, get trial one here.

Agree to the End User License Agreement and Submit to finish the installation. This is the end of the installation of Ansible Tower on CentOS 7, our next tutorials will cover using Ansible Tower to automate IT operations.

Best Courses to Learn Ansible Automation:

• Dive Into Ansible – From Beginner to Expert in Ansible
• Ansible Essentials with Hands-on Labs
• Ansible for the Absolute Beginner – Hands-On – DevOps
• Mastering Ansible
• Ansible Advanced – Hands-On – DevOps
• Ansible for the DevOps Beginners & System Admins
• Ansible for Network Engineers: Quick Start GNS3 & Ansible

Also check:

Install Apache Tomcat On Ubuntu 18.04 / CentOS 7 With Ansible

Build AWS EC2 Machine Images (AMI) With Packer and Ansible

Semaphore – Manage Ansible Tasks from A Web UI

Install Ansible AWX on CentOS 7 / Fedora