I am still on the re-install apps land on the macOS, and this is a mini guide on how to install Ansible Tower using Vagrant for demo/trial usage only.
The first step is to install Vagrant if not already installed for other means. Vagrant relies on interactions with 3rd party systems, known as “providers”, to provide Vagrant with resources to run development environments. I am running VirtualBox.
To verify the installation of both Vagrant and VirtualBox:
vagrant --version vboxmanage --version
Once the installation of both Vagrant and VirtualBox are completed, Ansible Tower can be initialized by creating a Vagrantfile with default instructions in the current directory as follows:
vagrant init ansible/tower vagrant up
The process takes a few minutes the first time, and once complete:
vagrant ssh
The vagrant ssh command will give you your admin password and the Tower log-in URL (https://10.42.0.42). This is using the default (basic) settings in Vagrantfile and it can be edited further, including a more specific name for the ansible VM.
To verify the Ansible version:
ansible --version
At the moment, there are two trial/demo licenses available: one with enterprise features such as LDAP and Active Directory support, System Tracking, Audit Trails, Surveys, and one limited to 10 nodes and no expiration date, however, it does not include the enterprise features just listed. The open source alternative (or non-enterprise version) with no node limitation is the project AWX.
Below is the main (default) dashboard of Ansible Tower:
And here is a nice walk-through on the GUI: Ansible Tower demo.
Tip: if by any chance 10.42.0.42 can not be accessed the first time, check the routing table (ip r) and interfaces (ip a show) to see if 10.42.0.0/24 is listed on the Vagrant VM. If not listed, reinstall everything.
print(“software-defined words”) 