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Deploying a high availability automation hub

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.3

Overview of the requirements and procedures for a high availability deployment of automation hub.

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Abstract

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Preface

This guide provides an overview of the requirements and procedures for a high availability deployment of your automation hub.

A high availability (HA) configuration increases reliability and scalablility for automation hub deployments.

HA deployments of automation hub have multiple nodes that concurrently run the same service with a load balancer distributing workload (an "active-active" configuration). This configuration eliminates single points of failure to minimize service downtime and allows you to easily add or remove nodes to meet workload demands.

This guide covers deployment of a HA automation hub application stack only. Other HA components, such as database and file system HA, or setting up DNS load balancing, are out of scope for this guide.

Making open source more inclusive

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code, documentation, and web properties. We are beginning with these four terms: master, slave, blacklist, and whitelist. Because of the enormity of this endeavor, these changes will be implemented gradually over several upcoming releases. For more details, see our CTO Chris Wright’s message.

Chapter 1. Requirements for a high availability automation hub

Before deploying a high availability (HA) automation hub, ensure that you have a shared filesystem installed in your environment and that you have configured your network storage system, if applicable.

1.1. Required shared filesystem

A high availability automation hub requires you to have a shared file system, such as NFS, already installed in your environment. Before you run the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform installer, verify that you installed the /var/lib/pulp directory across your cluster as part of the shared file system installation. The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform installer returns an error if /var/lib/pulp is not detected in one of your nodes, causing your high availability automation hub setup to fail.

1.2. Network Storage Installation Requirements

If you intend to install a HA automation hub using a network storage on the automation hub nodes itself, you must first install and use firewalld to open the necessary ports as required by your shared storage system before running the Ansible Automation Platform installer.

Install and configure firewalld by executing the following commands:

  1. Install the firewalld daemon: 

    $ dnf install firewalld

  2. Add your network storage under <service> using the following command: 

    $ firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=<service>
    Note

    For a list of supported services, use the $ firewall-cmd --get-services command

  3. Reload to apply the configuration: 

    $ firewall-cmd --reload

Chapter 2. Installing a high availability automation hub

Configure the Ansible Automation Platform installer to install automation hub in a highly available (HA) configuration. Install HA automation hub on SELinux by creating mount points and adding the appropriate SELinux contexts to your Ansible Automation Platform environment.

2.1. Highly available automation hub installation

Install a highly available automation hub by making the following changes to the inventory file in the Ansible Automation Platform installer, then running the ./setup.sh script:

Specify database host IP

Specify the IP address for your database host, using the automation_pg_host and automation_pg_port inventory variables. For example: 

automationhub_pg_host='192.0.2.10'
automationhub_pg_port='5432'

also specify the IP address for your database host in the [database] section, using the value in the automationhub_pg_host inventory variable: 

[database]
192.0.2.10

List all instances in a clustered setup

If installing a clustered setup, replace localhost ansible_connection=local in the [automationhub] section with the hostname or IP of all instances. For example: 

[automationhub]
automationhub1.testing.ansible.com ansible_user=cloud-user ansible_host=192.0.2.18
automationhub2.testing.ansible.com ansible_user=cloud-user ansible_host=192.0.2.20
automationhub3.testing.ansible.com ansible_user=cloud-user ansible_host=192.0.2.22

Red Hat Single Sign-On requirements

If you are implementing Red Hat Single Sign-On on your automation hub environment, specify the main automation hub URL that clients will connect to, using the automationhub_main_url inventory variable. For example: 

automationhub_main_url = 'https://automationhub.ansible.com'
Note

If automationhub_main_url is not specified, the first node in the [automationhub] group will be used as default.

2.2. Install a high availability (HA) deployment of automation hub on SELinux

To set up a high availability (HA) deployment of automation hub on SELinux, create two mount points for /var/lib/pulp and /var/lib/pulp/pulpcore_static, then assign the appropriate SELinux contexts to each. You must add the context for /var/lib/pulp/pulpcore_static and run the Ansible Automation Platform installer before adding the context for /var/lib/pulp.

Prerequisites

  • You have already configured a NFS export on your server.

Pre-installation procedure

  1. Create a mount point at /var/lib/pulp: 

    $ mkdir /var/lib/pulp/

  2. Open /etc/fstab using a text editor, then add the following values: 

    srv_rhel8:/data /var/lib/pulp nfs defaults,_netdev,nosharecache 0 0
srv_rhel8:/data/pulpcore_static /var/lib/pulp/pulpcore_static nfs defaults,_netdev,nosharecache,context="system_u:object_r:httpd_sys_content_rw_t:s0" 0 0

  3. Run the mount command for /var/lib/pulp: 

    $ mount /var/lib/pulp

  4. Create a mount point at /var/lib/pulp/pulpcore_static: 

    $ mkdir /var/lib/pulp/pulpcore_static

  5. Run the mount command: 

    $ mount -a

  6. With the mount points set up, run the Ansible Automation Platform installer: 

    $ setup.sh -- -b --become-user root

Once the installation is complete, unmount the /var/lib/pulp/ mount point then apply the appropriate SELinux context:

Post-installation procedure

  1. Shut down the Pulp service: 

    $ systemctl stop pulpcore.service

  2. Unmount /var/lib/pulp/pulpcore_static: 

    $ umount /var/lib/pulp/pulpcore_static

  3. Unmount /var/lib/pulp/: 

    $ umount /var/lib/pulp/

  4. Open /etc/fstab using a text editor, then replace the existing value for /var/lib/pulp with the following: 

    srv_rhel8:/data /var/lib/pulp nfs defaults,_netdev,nosharecache,context="system_u:object_r:pulpcore_var_lib_t:s0" 0 0

  5. Run the mount command: 

    $ mount -a

Configure pulpcore.service:

  1. With the two mount points set up, shut down the Pulp service to configure pulpcore.service: 

    $ systemctl stop pulpcore.service

  2. Edit pulpcore.service using systemctl: 

    $ systemctl edit pulpcore.service

  3. Add the following entry to pulpcore.service to ensure that automation hub services starts only after starting the network and mounting the remote mount points: 

    [Unit]
After=network.target var-lib-pulp.mount

  4. Enable remote-fs.target: 

    $ systemctl enable remote-fs.target

  5. Reboot the system: 

    $ systemctl reboot

Troubleshooting

A bug in the pulpcore SELinux policies can cause the token authentication public/private keys in etc/pulp/certs/ to not have the proper SELinux labels, causing the pulp process to fail. When this occurs, run the following command to temporarily attach the proper labels: 

$ chcon system_u:object_r:pulpcore_etc_t:s0 /etc/pulp/certs/token_{private,public}_key.pem
Note

You must repeat this command to reattach the proper SELinux labels whenever you relabel your system.

Additional Resources

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