Chapter 24. System roles

This chapter lists the most notable changes to system roles between RHEL 8 and RHEL 9.

24.1. Performing system administration tasks with RHEL System Roles

As of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 General Availability (GA) release, RHEL System Roles includes the ansible-core 2.12 package. This is a version of Ansible that has only the core functionality - that is, it does not include modules such as blivet for the storage role, gobject for the network role, and plugins such as json_query.

With RHEL System Roles, you can take advantage of a configuration interface to remotely manage multiple RHEL systems. As an option to the traditional RHEL System Roles format, you can benefit from Ansible Collections, available in the Automation Hub only for Ansible Automation Platform Customers or via RPM package, available for RHEL users.

RHEL System Roles support

Support for the following roles are available:

  • The cockpit RHEL System Role. You can automate the deployment and configuration of the web console and, thus, be able to manage your RHEL systems from a web browser.
  • The firewall RHEL System Role.
  • The ha_cluster RHEL System Role, formerly presented as a Technology Preview, is now fully supported.
  • The nbde_client RHEL System Role now supports servers with static IP addresses.
  • The Microsoft SQL (microsoft.sql.server) role for Microsoft SQL Server. It simplifies and automates the configuration of RHEL with recommended settings for MSSQL Server workloads. Currently, the SQL Server does not support running on RHEL 9. You can only run the role on a RHEL 9 control node to manage the SQL Server on RHEL 7 and RHEL 8.
  • The VPN RHEL System Role, to configure VPN connections on RHEL systems by using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Users can use it to set up host-to-host, network-to-network, VPN Remote Access Server, and Mesh configurations.
  • The IPMI modules, to automate hardware management interfaces available in the rhel_mgmt Collection.

To learn more about the RHEL System Roles, see the documentation title Administration and configuration tasks using System Roles in RHEL.

Support for Ansible Engine 2.9 is no longer available in RHEL 9

Ansible Engine 2.9 is no longer available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. Playbooks that previously ran on Ansible Engine 2.9 might generate error messages related to missing plugins or modules. If your use case for Ansible falls outside of the limited scope of support for Ansible Core provided in RHEL, contact Red Hat to discuss the available offerings.

RHEL System Roles now uses Ansible Core

As of the RHEL 9 General Availability release, Ansible Core is provided with a limited scope of support to enable RHEL supported automation use cases. Ansible Core is available in the AppStream repository for RHEL. For details on the scope of support, refer to Scope of support for the Ansible Core package included in the RHEL 9 AppStream.

Note

As of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0, the scope of support for Ansible Core in the RHEL AppStream is limited to any Ansible playbooks, roles, and modules that are included with or generated by a Red Hat product, such as RHEL System Roles.