Chapter 5. Multi-Credential Assignment

Before automation controller v3.3, job templates had the following requirements with respect to credentials:

This model required a variety of disjoint interfaces for specifying credentials on a job template and it lacked the ability to associate multiple Vault credentials with a playbook run, a use case supported by Ansible core from Ansible 2.4 onwards.

This model also poses a stumbling block for certain playbook execution workflows, such as having to attach a "dummy" Machine/SSH credential to the job template to satisfy the requirement.

All automation controller 4.4 Job templates have a single interface for credential assignment.

From the API endpoint:

GET /api/v2/job_templates/N/credentials/

GET /api/v2/job_templates/N/credentials/

You can associate and disassociate credentials using POST requests, similar to the behavior in the deprecated extra_credentials endpoint:

POST /api/v2/job_templates/N/credentials/ {'associate': true, 'id': 'X'}
POST /api/v2/job_templates/N/credentials/ {'disassociate': true, 'id': 'Y'}

POST /api/v2/job_templates/N/credentials/ {'associate': true, 'id': 'X'}
POST /api/v2/job_templates/N/credentials/ {'disassociate': true, 'id': 'Y'}

With this model, a job template is considered valid even when there are no credentials assigned to it. This model also provides users the ability to assign multiple Vault credentials to a job template.

Before automation controller v3.3, job templates used a configurable attribute, ask_credential_on_launch. This value was used at launch time to determine which missing credential values were necessary for launch. This was a way to specify a Machine or SSH credential to satisfy the minimum credential requirement.

Under the unified credential list model, this attribute still exists, but it no longer requires a credential. Now when ask_credential_on_launch is true, it signifies that you can specify a list of credentials at launch time to override those defined on the job template. For example:

POST /api/v2/job_templates/N/launch/ {'credentials': [A, B, C]}`

POST /api/v2/job_templates/N/launch/ {'credentials': [A, B, C]}`

If ask_credential_on_launch is false, it signifies that custom credentials provided in the POST /api/v2/job_templates/N/launch/ are ignored.

Under this model, the only purpose for ask_credential_on_launch is to signal API clients to prompt the user for (optional) changes at launch time.

Because you can assign multiple credentials to a job, you can specify multiple Vault credentials to decrypt when your job template runs. This functionality mirrors the support for Managing vault passwords.

Vault credentials now have an optional field, vault_id, which is similar to the --vault-id argument of ansible-playbook.

Use the following procedure to run a playbook which makes use of multiple vault passwords:

POST /api/v2/job_templates/N/credentials/

{
    'associate': true,
    'id': X
}

POST /api/v2/job_templates/N/credentials/

{
    'associate': true,
    'id': X
}

Alternatively, you can perform the same assignment in the automation controller UI in the Create Credential page:

In this example, the credential created specifies the secret to be used by its Vault Identifier ("first") and password pair. When this credential is used in a Job Template, as in the following example, it only decrypts the secret associated with the "first" Vault ID:

If you have a playbook that is set up the traditional way with all the secrets in one big file without distinction, then leave the Vault Identifier field blank when setting up the Vault credential.

GET /api/v2/job_templates/N/launch/
{
    'passwords_needed_to_start': [
        'vault_password.X',
        'vault_password.Y',
    ]
}

GET /api/v2/job_templates/N/launch/
{
    'passwords_needed_to_start': [
        'vault_password.X',
        'vault_password.Y',
    ]
}

POST /api/v2/job_templates/N/launch/
{
    'credential_passwords': {
        'vault_password.X': 'first-vault-password'
        'vault_password.Y': 'second-vault-password'
    }
}

POST /api/v2/job_templates/N/launch/
{
    'credential_passwords': {
        'vault_password.X': 'first-vault-password'
        'vault_password.Y': 'second-vault-password'
    }
}