Get AWX running on your Mac
Please note:
It looks like how AWX is installed has changed since I wrote this article. The version I wrote it for was 17.x.x.
https://github.com/ansible/awx/blob/devel/INSTALL.md
It looks like they’ve deprecated Docker and now recommend you install via AWX Operator instead.
Therefore while this article may be useful still, it definitely needs an update when I have time (lol) and you should look into the correct way of installing AWX on your machine.
WTF is AWX?
AWX is the free, open source version of Ansible Tower. Owned by Red Hat, Ansible is a configuration management tool for keeping your infrastructure in a desired state. Like Fedora is the upstream OS for RHEL, AWX is the upstream project for Ansible Tower. AWX is a central interface for managing all your ansible hosts and inventory in one place.
Why in the god damn shit would I want to use that?
Do you like consistent, repeatable, infrastructure deploys? Do you hate logging onto machines carrying out tedious tasks? Do you cry at the thought of running yum update everywhere? Of course you do. Why else would you be reading a DevOps article? You’re not here for my starling wit.
Ansible is just one of many configuration management tools you can use to achieve this. They all work in a similar fashion. You define a state for your infrastructure in a file. The config management tool then takes your defined state and ensures your servers match that state. If it finds the state has differed, it will correct it.
For example, let’s say you have a coworker who has decided the default text editor on all 350 of your VM’s should be Midnight Commander*. Why? Because he likes it and fuck the other 7 people on the team. After you’ve hidden his body under the server room floor, you’re going to want an easy way to unfuck that mess. Config management tools will do that for you. What they won’t do is solve the age old argument over which text editor is best to begin with, but no-one thinks it’s Midnight Commander.
*Yes, this actually happened, and I fixed it with Puppet.
