Mastering Ansible - Third Edition

Getting AWX up and running

Before we get stuck into installing AWX, it is worth briefly exploring what AWX is, and indeed isn't. AWX is a tool to be employed alongside Ansible. It does not duplicate or replicate, in any way, the features of Ansible—indeed, when Ansible playbooks are run from AWX, the ansible-playbook binary is being called behind the scenes. Rather, AWX should be considered a complementary tool that adds the following benefits, on which many enterprises depend:

• Rich role-based access control (RBAC)
• Integration with centralized login services (for example, LDAP or Active Directory)
• Secure credential management
• Auditability
• Accountability
• Lower barrier to entry for new operators
• Improved management of playbook version control ...