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Templates#

A job template is a definition and set of parameters for running an Ansible job.

Ansible Tower Job Template Documentation Note: Does not perfectly translate to AWX

Templates set up run jobs for your ansible playbooks.

(If you are looking for help using Ansible's template module, find resources here)

Setup#

You will need:

  1. A Project setup in Tower that has the playbook you'd like to run.
  2. The inventory you'd like to run the playbook against
  3. A 'machine' type credential for connecting to your linux hosts. It is recommended you do not use your own credentials for this and instead have a dedicated user.
    • NOTE: For jointly managed servers, DevEx will set up the awx_user machine credential in Tower and SSH Keys on the servers. We are looking to automate this process, but in the meantime, please email devex@umn.edu with a list of vm's and your CESI unit to have the awx_user added to additional jointly managed VMs.

Other things to consider are:

  • What other credentials do you need to include in your template for your playbook to reference?
  • How are you handling secrets in your playbook?
  • Do you want to limit the playbook run to specific groups? Add these in 'Limit'
  • Do you want to include any tags? Add these in 'Tags'
  • Execution Environment (Optional)
  • The default EE is our devex-ee container. DevEx maintains this execution environment and it comes with many common modules installed.
  • If you would like to have another module added to the container, please open a ticket by sending an email to devex@umn.edu.

Jobs#

A template can be run from the template page, or, start a playbook run job at any point by clicking the rocket ship icon anywhere it is visible.

You can schedule jobs to run using a template through the schedules tab in the template details.

Scheduled Jobs#

Jobs can be scheduled to run from the 'Schedules' tab in a configured template.

Please limit scheduled runs for non-production to once an hour.