Chapter 3. Post-installation steps
Whether you are a new Ansible Automation Platform user looking to start automating, or an existing administrator looking to migrate old Ansible content to your latest installed version of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, explore the next steps to begin using the new features of Ansible Automation Platform 2.4.
3.1. Steps to migrate data to Ansible Automation Platform 2.4
For platform administrators looking to complete an upgrade to the Ansible Automation Platform 2.4, there may be additional steps needed to migrate data to a new instance:
To complete an upgrade to Ansible Automation Platform 2.4, you must migrate your data. Migrating data to a new instance requires additional steps.
3.1.1. Migrating from legacy virtual environments (venvs) to automation execution environments
Ansible Automation Platform 2.4 moves you away from custom Python virtual environments (venvs) in favor of automation execution environments - containerized images that package the necessary components needed to run and scale your Ansible automation. These components include ansible-core, Ansible Content Collections, Python dependencies, Red Hat Enterprise Linux UBI 8, and any additional package dependencies.
To migrate your venvs to execution environments, you must use the awx-manage command to list and export a list of venvs from your original instance, and then use ansible-builder to create execution environments.
3.1.2. Migrating Ansible Engine images using Ansible Builder
To migrate previous Ansible Engine images for use with Ansible Automation Platform 2.4, use the ansible-builder tool to automate the process of rebuilding images (including its custom plugins and dependencies) for use with automation execution environments.
Additional resources
- See Creating and Consuming Execution Environments for more information about using Ansible Builder to build execution environments.
3.1.3. Migrating to Ansible Core 2.13
When upgrading to ansible-core 2.13, you must update your playbooks and plugins, or other parts of your Ansible infrastructure to be supported by the latest version of ansible-core.
Additional resources
For instructions on updating your Ansible content for ansible-core 2.13 compatibility, see the Ansible-core 2.13 Porting Guide.
3.2. Updating execution environment image locations
If you installed private automation hub separately from Ansible Automation Platform, you can update your execution environment image locations to point to your private automation hub.
Procedure
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Go to the directory that contains
setup.sh Create
./group_vars/automationcontrollerby running the following command:touch ./group_vars/automationcontroller
Paste the following content into
./group_vars/automationcontroller. Adjust the settings to fit your environment:# Automation Hub Registry registry_username: 'your-automation-hub-user' registry_password: 'your-automation-hub-password' registry_url: 'automationhub.example.org' registry_verify_ssl: False ## Execution Environments control_plane_execution_environment: 'automationhub.example.org/ee-supported-rhel8:latest' global_job_execution_environments: - name: "Default execution environment" image: "automationhub.example.org/ee-supported-rhel8:latest" - name: "Minimal execution environment" image: "automationhub.example.org/ee-minimal-rhel8:latest"Run the
./setup.shscript$ ./setup.sh
Verification
- Log in to Ansible Automation Platform as a user with system administrator access.
-
Go to
. -
In the Image column, confirm that the execution environment image location has changed from the default value of
<registry url>/ansible-automation-platform-<version>/<image name>:<tag>to<automation hub url>/<image name>:<tag>.
3.3. Benefits of automation mesh
The automation mesh component of the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform simplifies the process of distributing automation across multi-site deployments. For enterprises with multiple isolated IT environments, automation mesh provides a consistent and reliable way to deploy and scale up automation across your execution nodes using a peer-to-peer mesh communication network.
When upgrading from version 1.x to the latest version of Ansible Automation Platform, you must migrate the data from your legacy isolated nodes into execution nodes necessary for automation mesh. You can implement automation mesh by planning out a network of hybrid and control nodes, then editing the inventory file found in the Ansible Automation Platform installer to assign mesh-related values to each of your execution nodes.
Additional resources
- For instructions on how to migrate from isolated nodes to execution nodes, see the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Upgrade and Migration Guide.
For information about automation mesh and the various ways to design your automation mesh for your environment:
- For a VM-based installation, see the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform automation mesh guide for VM-based installations.
- For an operator-based installation, see the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform automation mesh for operator-based installations.
