TPA and Ansible Tower/Ansible Automation Platform v23

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TPA has support for RedHat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) an automation controller. You run only deploy and upgrade steps on AAP. You run configuration and provisioning on a standalone machine with the tpa package installed. You can then import the resulting cluster directory on AAP. Support is limited to bare-metal platforms.

AAP initial setup

Before TPA can use AAP to deploy clusters, you need to perform this initial setup.

Add TPA Execution Environment image (admin)

Starting with version 2.4, AAP uses container images to run Ansible playbooks. These containers, called Execution Environments (EE), bundle dependencies required by playbooks to run successfully.

Note

EDB customers can reach out to EDB Support for help with EE.

As an AAP admin, create an entry in your available EE list that points to your EE image.

Create the EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN credential type (admin)

As an AAP admin, create the custom credential type EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKENto hold your EDB subscription access token:

Go to the Credentials Type page in the AAP UI.
Set the Name field to EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN.

Paste the following into the Input Configuration field:

fields:
- id: tpa_edb_sub_token
  type: string
  label: EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN
  secret: true
required:
- tpa_edb_sub_token

Paste the following into the Injector Configuration field:
```
env:
  EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN: '{{ tpa_edb_sub_token }}'
```
Save the changes.
Create a credential using the newly added type EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN.

Setting up a cluster

Perform the initial steps on a workstation with the tpaexec package installed.

On the TPA workstation

Configure

Run the tpaexec configure command, including these options: --platform bare, --use-ansible-tower, --tower-git-repository

[tpa]$ tpaexec configure <clustername> \
         --platform bare \
         --use-ansible-tower https://aac.example.com \
         --tower-git-repository ssh://git@git.example.com/example \
         --hostnames-from <hostnamefile> \
         --architecture PGD-Always-ON \
         --pgd-proxy-routing local \
         --postgresql 16

--use-ansible-tower expects the AAP address as a parameter even if it isn't used at the time. --tower-git-repository is used to import the cluster data into AAP. TPA creates its own branch using cluster_name as the branch name, which allows you to use the same repository for all of your clusters. All other options to tpaexec configure, as described in Configuration, are still valid.

config.yml modification

config.yml includes the top-level dictionary ansible_tower, which causes tpaexec provision to treat the cluster as an AAP-enabled cluster.

Edit config.yml to ensure that ansible_host and {private,public}_ip are defined for each node and ansible_host is set to a value that AAP can resolve. Make any change or addition needed. See Cluster configuration.

To generate inventory and other related files, run tpaexec provision .

On the AAP UI

Project

Add a project in AAP using the git repository as the source. Set the default EE to use the image provided by TPA.

Project options

To ensure changes are correctly synced before running a job, we strongly recommend using Update Revision on Launch.

Allow Branch Override is required when trying to use multiple inventories with a single project.

Inventory

Add an empty inventory. Use the project as an external source to populate it using inventory/00-cluster_name as the inventory file.

Inventory options

To ensure changes are correctly synced, We strongly recommend using Overwrite local groups and hosts from remote inventory source.

We also recommend using Overwrite local variables from remote inventory source when not setting additional variables outside TPA's control in AAP.

Credentials

Create a vault credential. You can retrieve the vault password using tpaexec show-vault <cluster_dir> on the TPA workstation.

To connect to your inventory nodes by way of SSH during deployment, make sure the machine credential is available in AAP.

Template creation

To create a template:

Create a template that uses your project and your inventory.
Include these required credentials:
- Vault credential
- EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN credential
- Machine credential

Set two additional variables:

tpa_dir: /opt/EDB/TPA
cluster_dir: /runner/project

Select deploy.yml as the playbook.
To deploy your cluster, run a job based on the new template.

Use one project for multiple inventory

TPA uses a different branch name for each of your clusters in the associated git repository. This approach allows the use of a single project for multiple clusters.

Set Allow branch override option

In the AAP project, enable the Allow branch override option.

Define multiple inventories

TPA uses a different branch name for each of your clusters in the git repository. You can generate multiple inventories using the same project as the source by overriding the branch for each inventory.

Define credentials per inventory

Ensure vault passwords are set accordingly per inventory since these differ on each TPA cluster.

Update TPA on AAP

Updating TPA on AAP involves some extra steps.

Update TPA workstation package

Update your TPA workstation package as any OS package depending on your OS. See Installation.

Use EE image with same version tag

Modify the EE image in AAP to use the same version tag as the workstation package version used.

Run tpaexec relink on your cluster directory

Ensure that any cluster using AAP is up to date by running tpaexec relink <cluster_dir>. Be sure to push any change committed by the relink command:

$ git status
On branch cluster_name
Your branch is ahead of 'tower/cluster_name' by 1 commit.
  (use "git push" to publish your local commits)
...
$ git push tower

Sync project and inventories

If they aren't set to use Update revision on job launch and Update on launch, sync the project in the AAP UI and related inventories, respectively.