Provision AWX on Kubernetes

A Complete Guide on install AWX on Kubernetes using the AWX Operator

After spending a good amount of time googling around, I managed to deploy a working instance of AWX, the upstream project for Ansible Automation Platform. In this guide I have summarized the steps you need to follow to in order to succesfully deploy and working AWX instance.

For this guide you will need to have a working Kubernetes cluster with suffient resources (Single node k8s will do just fine). You will also need a working PostgreSQL, in the case you want to use an external DB like me.

Overview

Before diving into the details, here’s a brief overview the related repos:

• AWX: AWX Repository
• Operator: AWX Operator Repository
• Operator Helm Chart: AWX Operator Helm Chart Repository

Prerequisites

• Working K8s instance
• Working PostgreSQL instance (Optional)
• kubectl installed
• Helm installed
• Sufficient cluster recourses

Install AWX Operator

First we need to install the AWX Operator on K8s. For me, by far the easiest way to install and keep the operator updated is via the helm chart. If you want an installation method with some chest hair you may refer to this guide.

Use Helm install the following chart.

helm install awx-operator awx-operator/awx-operator -n awx --create-namespace -f values.yaml

The values.yaml below will tell the operator to not provision an internal PostgreSQL. For using an internal DB or add further customization please refer to this repo

yalues.yaml

AWX:
  # enable use of awx-deploy template
  enabled: false
  name: awx
  spec:
    admin_user: admin
  # configurations for external postgres instance
  postgres:
    enabled: false
    host: Unset
    port: 5678
    dbName: Unset
    username: admin
    # for secret management, pass in the password independently of this file
    # at the command line, use --set AWX.postgres.password
    password: Unset
    sslmode: prefer
    type: unmanaged
rbac:
  create: true
operator-controller: {}
operator-controller-containers: {}

Deploy AWX

Deploying AWX is rather simple. First create the following files.

03-awx.yaml

apiVersion: awx.ansible.com/v1beta1
kind: AWX
metadata:
  name: awx
  namespace: awx
spec:
  service_type: ClusterIP
  hostname: awx.domain.com
  postgres_configuration_secret: awx-postgres-credentials # This is needed since we are using and external DB
  admin_user: admin
  admin_password_secret: awx-admin-credentials

01-awx-admin-credentials.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: awx-admin-credentials
  annotations: {}
  labels: {}
  namespace: awx
data:
  # As I am writing this guide it was not clear if the deployment expects `admin_password` or `password` variable
  admin_password: <BASE64 PASSWORD> 
  password: <BASE64 PASSWORD> 
type: Opaque

02-awx-postgres-credentials.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: awx-postgres-credentials
  namespace: awx
  annotations: {}
  labels: {}
data:
  host: <BASE64 encoded ip or fqdn>
  port: <BASE64 encoded port>
  database: <BASE64 encoded database name>
  username: <BASE64 encoded database username>
  password: <BASE64 encoded database password>
type: Opaque

Since I prefer running my services behind an Ingress (in my case traefik), I also created an ingress deployment. You may use it as a template for your own ingress deployment.

06-ingress.yaml

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: awx-ingress
  annotations: {}
  labels: {}    
  namespace: awx
spec:
  ingressClassName: traefik
  rules:
    - host: awx.domain.com
      http:
        paths:
          - backend:
              service:
                port:
                  number: 80
                name: awx-service
            path: /
            pathType: Prefix

Now that we have all our files we can deploy them using kubectl

cd /folder/where/files/are
kubectl apply -f .

Wait a few minutes and you should have a working AWX instance using an external DB. Verify that all pods are running and navigate to the fqdn you configured on ingress to access the Web GUI.