AWX on Single Node K3s

An example implementation of AWX on single node K3s using AWX Operator, with easy-to-use simplified configuration with ownership of data and passwords.

• Accessible over HTTPS from remote host
• All data will be stored under /data
• Fixed (configurable) passwords for AWX and PostgreSQL
• Fixed (configurable) versions of AWX

If you want to view the guide for the specific version of AWX Operator, switch the page to the desired tag instead of the main branch.

Table of Contents

• Environment
• References
• Requirements
• Deployment Instruction
  • Prepare CentOS Stream 8 host
  • Install K3s
  • Install AWX Operator
  • Prepare required files to deploy AWX
  • Deploy AWX
• Back up and Restore AWX using AWX Operator
• Additional Guides

Environment

• Tested on:
  • CentOS Stream 8 (Minimal)
  • K3s v1.28.5+k3s1
• Products that will be deployed:
  • AWX Operator 2.10.0
  • AWX 23.6.0
  • PostgreSQL 13

References

• K3s - Lightweight Kubernetes
• INSTALL.md on ansible/awx @23.6.0
• README.md on ansible/awx-operator @2.10.0

Requirements

• Computing resources
  • 2 CPUs and 4 GiB RAM minimum.
  • It's recommended to add more CPUs and RAM (like 4 CPUs and 8 GiB RAM or more) to avoid performance issue and job scheduling issue.
  • The files in this repository are configured to ignore resource requirements which specified by AWX Operator by default.
• Storage resources
  • At least 10 GiB for /var/lib/rancher and 10 GiB for /data are safe for fresh install.
  • Both will be grown during lifetime and actual consumption highly depends on your environment and your use case, so you should to pay attention to the consumption and add more capacity if required.
  • /var/lib/rancher will be created and consumed by K3s and related data like container images and overlayfs.
  • /data will be created in this guide and used to store AWX-related databases and files.

Deployment Instruction

Prepare CentOS Stream 8 host

Disable firewalld and nm-cloud-setup if enabled. This is recommended by K3s.

# Disable firewalld
sudo systemctl disable firewalld --now

# Disable nm-cloud-setup if exists and enabled
sudo systemctl disable nm-cloud-setup.service nm-cloud-setup.timer
sudo reboot

Install required packages to deploy AWX Operator and AWX.

sudo dnf install -y git curl

Install K3s

Install specific version of K3s with --write-kubeconfig-mode 644 to make config file (/etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml) readable by non-root user.

curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | INSTALL_K3S_VERSION=v1.28.5+k3s1 sh -s - --write-kubeconfig-mode 644

Install AWX Operator

Clone this repository and change directory.

If you want to use files suitable for the specific version of AWX Operator, refer tags in this repository and specify desired tag in git checkout. Especially for 0.13.0 or earlier version of AWX Operator, refer to 📝Tips: Deploy older version of AWX Operator.

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/kurokobo/awx-on-k3s.git
cd awx-on-k3s
git checkout 2.10.0

Then invoke kubectl apply -k operator to deploy AWX Operator.

kubectl apply -k operator

The AWX Operator will be deployed to the namespace awx.

$ kubectl -n awx get all
NAME                                                   READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/awx-operator-controller-manager-68d787cfbd-kjfg7   2/2     Running   0          16s

NAME                                                      TYPE        CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
service/awx-operator-controller-manager-metrics-service   ClusterIP   10.43.150.245   <none>        8443/TCP   16s

NAME                                              READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/awx-operator-controller-manager   1/1     1            1           16s

NAME                                                         DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/awx-operator-controller-manager-68d787cfbd   1         1         1       16s

Prepare required files to deploy AWX

Generate a Self-Signed certificate. Note that IP address can't be specified. If you want to use a certificate from public ACME CA such as Let's Encrypt or ZeroSSL instead of Self-Signed certificate, follow the guide on 📁 Use SSL Certificate from Public ACME CA first and come back to this step when done.

AWX_HOST="awx.example.com"
openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 3650 -newkey rsa:2048 -out ./base/tls.crt -keyout ./base/tls.key -subj "/CN=${AWX_HOST}/O=${AWX_HOST}" -addext "subjectAltName = DNS:${AWX_HOST}"

Modify hostname in base/awx.yaml.

...
spec:
  ...
  ingress_type: ingress
  ingress_tls_secret: awx-secret-tls
  hostname: awx.example.com     👈👈👈
...

Modify two passwords in base/kustomization.yaml. Note that the password under awx-postgres-configuration should not contain single or double quotes (', ") or backslashes (\) to avoid any issues during deployment, backup or restoration.

...
  - name: awx-postgres-configuration
    type: Opaque
    literals:
      - host=awx-postgres-13
      - port=5432
      - database=awx
      - username=awx
      - password=Ansible123!     👈👈👈
      - type=managed

  - name: awx-admin-password
    type: Opaque
    literals:
      - password=Ansible123!     👈👈👈
...

Prepare directories for Persistent Volumes defined in base/pv.yaml. These directories will be used to store your databases and project files. Note that the size of the PVs and PVCs are specified in some of the files in this repository, but since their backends are hostPath, its value is just like a label and there is no actual capacity limitation.

sudo mkdir -p /data/postgres-13
sudo mkdir -p /data/projects
sudo chmod 755 /data/postgres-13
sudo chown 1000:0 /data/projects

Deploy AWX

Deploy AWX, this takes few minutes to complete.

kubectl apply -k base

To monitor the progress of the deployment, check the logs of deployments/awx-operator-controller-manager:

kubectl -n awx logs -f deployments/awx-operator-controller-manager

When the deployment completes successfully, the logs end with:

$ kubectl -n awx logs -f deployments/awx-operator-controller-manager
...
----- Ansible Task Status Event StdOut (awx.ansible.com/v1beta1, Kind=AWX, awx/awx) -----
PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=84   changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=79   rescued=0    ignored=1

Required objects has been deployed next to AWX Operator in awx namespace.

$ kubectl -n awx get awx,all,ingress,secrets
NAME                      AGE
awx.awx.ansible.com/awx   6m15s

NAME                                                   READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/awx-operator-controller-manager-57867569c4-ggl29   2/2     Running   0          6m50s
pod/awx-postgres-13-0                                  1/1     Running   0          5m56s
pod/awx-task-5d8cd9b6b9-8ptjt                          4/4     Running   0          5m25s
pod/awx-web-66f89bc9cf-6zck5                           3/3     Running   0          4m39s

NAME                                                      TYPE        CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
service/awx-operator-controller-manager-metrics-service   ClusterIP   10.43.18.30     <none>        8443/TCP   7m
service/awx-postgres-13                                   ClusterIP   None            <none>        5432/TCP   5m55s
service/awx-service                                       ClusterIP   10.43.237.218   <none>        80/TCP     5m28s

NAME                                              READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/awx-operator-controller-manager   1/1     1            1           7m
deployment.apps/awx-task                          1/1     1            1           5m25s
deployment.apps/awx-web                           1/1     1            1           4m39s

NAME                                                         DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/awx-operator-controller-manager-57867569c4   1         1         1       6m50s
replicaset.apps/awx-task-5d8cd9b6b9                          1         1         1       5m25s
replicaset.apps/awx-web-66f89bc9cf                           1         1         1       4m39s

NAME                               READY   AGE
statefulset.apps/awx-postgres-13   1/1     5m56s

NAME                                    CLASS     HOSTS             ADDRESS         PORTS     AGE
ingress.networking.k8s.io/awx-ingress   traefik   awx.example.com   192.168.0.219   80, 443   5m27s

NAME                                  TYPE                DATA   AGE
secret/redhat-operators-pull-secret   Opaque              1      7m11s
secret/awx-admin-password             Opaque              1      6m15s
secret/awx-postgres-configuration     Opaque              6      6m15s
secret/awx-secret-tls                 kubernetes.io/tls   2      6m15s
secret/awx-app-credentials            Opaque              3      5m30s
secret/awx-secret-key                 Opaque              1      6m6s
secret/awx-broadcast-websocket        Opaque              1      6m2s
secret/awx-receptor-ca                kubernetes.io/tls   2      5m37s
secret/awx-receptor-work-signing      Opaque              2      5m33s

Now your AWX is available at https://awx.example.com/ or the hostname you specified.

Note that you have to access via hostname that you specified in base/awx.yaml, instead of IP address, since this guide uses Ingress. So you should configure your DNS or hosts file on your client where the browser is running.

At this point, AWX can be accessed via HTTP as well as HTTPS. If you want to force users to use HTTPS, see 📝Tips: Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS).

Back up and Restore AWX using AWX Operator

The AWX Operator 0.10.0 or later has the ability to back up and restore AWX in easy way.

Refer 📁 Back up AWX using AWX Operator and 📁 Restore AWX using AWX Operator for details.

Additional Guides

• 📁 Back up AWX using AWX Operator
  • The guide to make backup of your AWX using AWX Operator.
  • This guide includes not only the way to make backup manually, but also an example simple playbook for Ansible, which can be use with scheduling feature on AWX.
• 📁 Restore AWX using AWX Operator
  • The guide to restore your AWX using AWX Operator.
• 📁 Build and Use your own Execution Environment
  • The guide to use Ansible Builder to build our own Execution Environment.
• 📁 Deploy Private Git Repository on Kubernetes
  • The guide to use AWX with SCM. This repository includes the manifests to deploy Gitea.
• 📁 Deploy Private Container Registry on Kubernetes
  • The guide to use Execution Environments in AWX (AWX-EE).
  • If we want to use our own Execution Environment built with Ansible Builder and don't want to push it to the public container registry e.g. Docker Hub, we can deploy a private container registry on K3s.
• 📁 Integrate AWX with EDA Controller (Experimental)
  • The guide to deploy and use Event Driven Ansible Controller (EDA Controller) with AWX on K3s.
  • Note that EDA Controller Operator that used in this guide is not a fully supported installation method for EDA Controller.
• 📁 Deploy Private Galaxy NG on Docker or Kubernetes (Experimental)
  • The guide to deploy our own Galaxy NG instance.
  • Note that the containerized implementation of Galaxy NG is not officially supported at this time.
  • All information on the guide is for development, testing and study purposes only.
• 📁 Use SSL Certificate from Public ACME CA
  • The guide to use a certificate from public ACME CA such as Let's Encrypt or ZeroSSL instead of Self-Signed certificate.
• 📁 Use Ansible Runner
  • The guide to use Ansible Runner to run playbook using Execution Environment.
• 📁 Use Customized Pod Specification for your Execution Environment
  • The guide to use customized Pod of the Execution Environment using Container Group.
• 📁 Tips
  • 📝Create "Manual" type project
  • 📝Deploy AWX using external PostgreSQL database
  • 📝Trust custom Certificate Authority
  • 📝Expose /etc/hosts to Pods on K3s
  • 📝Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)
  • 📝Use HTTP proxy
  • 📝Uninstall deployed resources
  • 📝Deploy older version of AWX Operator
  • 📝Upgrade AWX Operator and AWX
  • 📝Workaround for the rate limit on Docker Hub
  • 📝Version Mapping for AWX Operator and AWX
  • 📝Use Kerberos authentication to connect to Windows hosts
  • 📝Use Helm or Operator Lifecycle Manager to manage AWX Operator and AWX
  • 📝Troubleshooting Guide