Chapter 3. Installing and configuring automation controller on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform web console

You can use these instructions to install the automation controller operator on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, specify custom resources, and deploy Ansible Automation Platform with an external database.

Note

When an instance of automation controller is removed, the associated PVCs are not automatically deleted. This can cause issues during migration if the new deployment has the same name as the previous one. Therefore, it is recommended that you manually remove old PVCs before deploying a new automation controller instance in the same namespace. See Finding and deleting PVCs for more information.

3.1. Prerequisites

  • You have installed the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform catalog in Operator Hub.

3.2. Installing the automation controller operator

  1. Navigate to Operators → Installed Operators, then click on the Ansible Automation Platform operator.
  2. Locate the Automation controller tab, then click Create instance.

You can proceed with configuring the instance using either the Form View or YAML view.

3.2.1. Configure your automation controller operator route options

The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform operator installation form allows you to further configure your automation controller operator route options under Advanced configuration.

  1. Click Advanced configuration.
  2. Under Ingress type, click the drop-down menu and select Route.
  3. Under Route DNS host, enter a common host name that the route answers to.
  4. Under Route TLS termination mechanism, click the drop-down menu and select Edge or Passthrough.
  5. Under Route TLS credential secret, click the drop-down menu and select a secret from the list.

3.2.2. Configure the Ingress type for your automation hub operator

The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform operator installation form allows you to further configure your automation hub operator Ingress under Advanced configuration.

Procedure

  1. Click Advanced Configuration.
  2. Under Ingress type, click the drop-down menu and select Ingress.
  3. Under Ingress annotations, enter any annotations to add to the ingress.
  4. Under Ingress TLS secret, click the drop-down menu and select a secret from the list.

After you have configured your automation hub operator, click Create at the bottom of the form view. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform will now create the pods. This may take a few minutes.

You can view the progress by navigating to Workloads → Pods and locating the newly created instance.

Verification

Verify that the following operator pods provided by the Ansible Automation Platform Operator installation from automation hub are running:

Operator manager controllersautomation controllerautomation hub

The operator manager controllers for each of the 3 operators, include the following:

  • automation-controller-operator-controller-manager
  • automation-hub-operator-controller-manager
  • resource-operator-controller-manager

After deploying automation controller, you will see the addition of these pods:

  • controller
  • controller-postgres

After deploying automation hub, you will see the addition of these pods:

  • hub-api
  • hub-content
  • hub-postgres
  • hub-redis
  • hub-worker
Note

A missing pod can indicate the need for a pull secret. Pull secrets are required for protected or private image registries. See Using image pull secrets for more information. You can diagnose this issue further by running oc describe pod <pod-name> to see if there is an ImagePullBackOff error on that pod.

Once you have configured your automation controller operator, click Create at the bottom of the form view. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform will now create the pods. This may take a few minutes.

  • View progress by navigating to Workloads → Pods and locating the newly created instance.

3.3. Configuring an external database for automation controller on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform operator

For users who prefer to deploy Ansible Automation Platform with an external database, they can do so by configuring a secret with instance credentials and connection information, then applying it to their cluster using the oc create command.

By default, the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform operator automatically creates and configures a managed PostgreSQL pod in the same namespace as your Ansible Automation Platform deployment. You can deploy Ansible Automation Platform with an external database instead of the managed PostgreSQL pod that the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform operator automatically creates.

Using an external database lets you share and reuse resources and manually manage backups, upgrades, and performance optimizations.

Note

The same external database (PostgreSQL instance) can be used for both automation hub and automation controller as long as the database names are different. In other words, you can have multiple databases with different names inside a single PostgreSQL instance.

The following section outlines the steps to configure an external database for your automation controller on a Ansible Automation Platform operator.

Prerequisite

The external database must be a PostgreSQL database that is the version supported by the current release of Ansible Automation Platform.

Note

Ansible Automation Platform 2.0 and 2.1 supports PostgreSQL 12.

Procedure

The external postgres instance credentials and connection information will need to be stored in a secret, which will then be set on the automation controller spec.

  1. Create a postgres_configuration_secret .yaml file, following the template below: 

    apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: external-postgres-configuration
  namespace: <target_namespace> 1
stringData:
  host: "<external_ip_or_url_resolvable_by_the_cluster>" 2
  port: "<external_port>" 3
  database: "<desired_database_name>"
  username: "<username_to_connect_as>"
  password: "<password_to_connect_with>" 4
  sslmode: "prefer" 5
  type: "unmanaged"
type: Opaque
    1
    Namespace to create the secret in. This should be the same namespace you wish to deploy to.
    2
    The resolvable hostname for your database node.
    3
    External port defaults to 5432.
    4
    Value for variable password should not contain single or double quotes (', ") or backslashes (\) to avoid any issues during deployment, backup or restoration.
    5
    The variable sslmode is valid for external databases only. The allowed values are: prefer, disable, allow, require, verify-ca, and verify-full.

  2. Apply external-postgres-configuration-secret.yml to your cluster using the oc create command. 

    $ oc create -f external-postgres-configuration-secret.yml

  3. When creating your AutomationController custom resource object, specify the secret on your spec, following the example below: 

    apiVersion: awx.ansible.com/v1beta1
kind: AutomationController
metadata:
  name: controller-dev
spec:
  postgres_configuration_secret: external-postgres-configuration

3.4. Finding and deleting PVCs

A persistent volume claim (PVC) is a storage volume used to store data that automation hub and automation controller applications use. These PVCs are independent from the applications and remain even when the application is deleted. If you are confident that you no longer need a PVC, or have backed it up elsewhere, you can manually delete them.

Procedure

  1. List the existing PVCs in your deployment namespace: 

    oc get pvc -n <namespace>
  2. Identify the PVC associated with your previous deployment by comparing the old deployment name and the PVC name.

  3. Delete the old PVC: 

    oc delete pvc -n <namespace> <pvc-name>

    == Additional resources