Chapter 2. Automation mesh for operator-based Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Scaling your automation mesh is available on OpenShift deployments of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and is possible through adding or removing nodes from your cluster dynamically, using the Instances resource of the automation controller UI, without running the installation script. Instances serve as nodes in your mesh topology. Automation mesh enables you to extend the footprint of your automation. The location where you launch a job can be different from the location where the ansible-playbook runs. To manage instances from the automation controller UI, you must have System Administrator or System Auditor permissions. In general, the more processor cores (CPU) and memory (RAM) a node has, the more jobs that can be scheduled to run on that node at once. For more information, see Automation controller capacity determination and job impact . 2.1. Prerequisites The automation mesh is dependent on hop and execution nodes running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Your Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform subscription grants you ten Red Hat Enterprise Linux licenses that can be used for running components of Ansible Automation Platform. For additional information about Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions, see Registering the system and managing subscriptions in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux documentation. The following steps prepare the RHEL instances for deployment of the automation mesh. You require a Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system. Each node in the mesh requires a static IP address, or a resolvable DNS hostname that automation controller can access. Ensure that you have the minimum requirements for the RHEL virtual machine before proceeding. For more information, see the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform system requirements . Deploy the RHEL instances within the remote networks where communication is required. For information about creating virtual machines, see Creating Virtual Machines in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux documentation. Remember to scale the capacity of your virtual machines sufficiently so that your proposed tasks can run on them. RHEL ISOs can be obtained from access.redhat.com. RHEL cloud images can be built using Image Builder from console.redhat.com. 2.2. Setting up Virtual Machines for use in an automation mesh Procedure SSH into each of the RHEL instances and perform the following steps. Depending on your network access and controls, SSH proxies or other access models might be required. Use the following command: ssh [username]@[host_ip_address] For example, for an Ansible Automation Platform instance running on Amazon Web Services. ssh ec2-user@10.0.0.6 Create or copy an SSH key that can be used to connect from the hop node to the execution node in later steps. This can be a temporary key used just for the automation mesh configuration, or a long-lived key. The SSH user and key are used in later steps. Enable your RHEL subscription with baseos and appstream repositories. Ansible Automation Platform RPM repositories are only available through subscription-manager, not the Red Hat Update Infrastructure (RHUI). If you attempt to use any other Linux footprint, including RHEL with RHUI, this causes errors. sudo subscription-manager register --auto-attach If Simple Content Access is enabled for your account, use: sudo subscription-manager register For more information about Simple Content Access, see Getting started with simple content access . Enable Ansible Automation Platform subscriptions and the proper Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform channel: # subscription-manager repos --enable ansible-automation-platform-2.4-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms for RHEL 8 # subscription-manager repos --enable ansible-automation-platform-2.4-for-rhel-9-x86_64-rpms for RHEL 9 Ensure the packages are up to date: sudo dnf upgrade -y Install the ansible-core packages: sudo dnf install -y ansible-core 2.3. Defining automation mesh node types To expand job capacity, create a standalone execution node that can be added to run alongside a deployment of automation controller. These execution nodes are not part of the automation controller Kubernetes cluster. The control nodes run in the cluster connect and submit work to the execution nodes through Receptor. These execution nodes are registered in automation controller as type execution instances, meaning they are only used to run jobs, not dispatch work or handle web requests as control nodes do. Hop nodes can be added to sit between the control plane of automation controller and standalone execution nodes. These hop nodes are not part of the Kubernetes cluster and are registered in automation controller as an instance of type hop , meaning they only handle inbound and outbound traffic for otherwise unreachable nodes in different or more strict networks. The following procedure demonstrates how to set the node type for the hosts. Procedure From the navigation panel, select Administration Instances . On the Instances list page, click Add . The Create new Instance window opens. An instance requires the following attributes: Host Name : (required) Enter a fully qualified domain name (public DNS) or IP address for your instance. This field is equivalent to hostname for installer-based deployments. Note If the instance uses private DNS that cannot be resolved from the control cluster, DNS lookup routing fails, and the generated SSL certificates is invalid. Use the IP address instead. Optional: Description : Enter a description for the instance. Instance State : This field is auto-populated, indicating that it is being installed, and cannot be modified. Listener Port : This port is used for the receptor to listen on for incoming connections. You can set the port to one that is appropriate for your configuration. This field is equivalent to listener_port in the API. The default value is 27199, though you can set your own port value. Instance Type : Only execution and hop nodes can be created. Operator based deployments do not support Control or Hybrid nodes. Options: Enable Instance : Check this box to make it available for jobs to run on an execution node. Check the Managed by Policy box to enable policy to dictate how the instance is assigned. Check the Peers from control nodes box to enable control nodes to peer to this instance automatically. For nodes connected to automation controller, check the Peers from Control nodes box to create a direct communication link between that node and automation controller. For all other nodes: If you are not adding a hop node, make sure Peers from Control is checked. If you are adding a hop node, make sure Peers from Control is not checked. For execution nodes that communicate with hop nodes, do not check this box. To peer an execution node with a hop node, click the icon to the Peers field. The Select Peers window is displayed. Peer the execution node to the hop node. Click Save . To view a graphical representation of your updated topology, see Topology viewer . Note Execute the following steps from any computer that has SSH access to the newly created instance. Click the icon to Install Bundle to download the tar file that includes this new instance and the files necessary to install the created node into the automation mesh. The install bundle contains TLS certificates and keys, a certificate authority, and a proper Receptor configuration file. receptor-ca.crt work-public-key.pem receptor.key install_receptor.yml inventory.yml group_vars/all.yml requirements.yml Extract the downloaded tar.gz Install Bundle from the location where you downloaded it. To ensure that these files are in the correct location on the remote machine, the install bundle includes the install_receptor.yml playbook. The playbook requires the Receptor collection. Run the following command to download the collection: ansible-galaxy collection install -r requirements.yml Before running the ansible-playbook command, edit the following fields in the inventory.yml file: all: hosts: remote-execution: ansible_host: 10.0.0.6 ansible_user: <username> # user provided ansible_ssh_private_key_file: ~/.ssh/<id_rsa> Ensure ansible_host is set to the IP address or DNS of the node. Set ansible_user to the username running the installation. Set ansible_ssh_private_key_file to contain the filename of the private key used to connect to the instance. The content of the inventory.yml file serves as a template and contains variables for roles that are applied during the installation and configuration of a receptor node in a mesh topology. You can modify some of the other fields, or replace the file in its entirety for advanced scenarios. For more information, see Role Variables . For a node that uses a private DNS, add the following line to inventory.yml : ansible_ssh_common_args: <your ssh ProxyCommand setting> This instructs the install-receptor.yml playbook to use the proxy command to connect through the local DNS node to the private node. When the attributes are configured, click Save . The Details page of the created instance opens. Save the file to continue. The system that is going to run the install bundle to setup the remote node and run ansible-playbook requires the ansible.receptor collection to be installed: ansible-galaxy collection install ansible.receptor or ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml Installing the receptor collection dependency from the requirements.yml file consistently retrieves the receptor version specified there. Additionally, it retrieves any other collection dependencies that might be needed in the future. Install the receptor collection on all nodes where your playbook will run, otherwise an error occurs. If receptor_listener_port is defined, the machine also requires an available open port on which to establish inbound TCP connections, for example, 27199. Run the following command to open port 27199 for receptor communication: sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=27199/tcp Note It might be the case that some servers do not listen on receptor port (the default is 27199) Suppose you have a Control plane with nodes A, B, C, D The RPM installer creates a strongly connected peering between the control plane nodes with a least privileged approach and opens the tcp listener only on those nodes where it is required. All the receptor connections are bidirectional, so once the connection is created, the receptor can communicate in both directions. The following is an example peering set up for three controller nodes: Controller node A --> Controller node B Controller node A --> Controller node C Controller node B --> Controller node C You can force the listener by setting receptor_listener=True However, a connection Controller B --> A is likely to be rejected as that connection already exists. This means that nothing connects to Controller A as Controller A is creating the connections to the other nodes, and the following command does not return anything on Controller A: [root@controller1 ~]# ss -ntlp | grep 27199 [root@controller1 ~]# Run the following playbook on the machine where you want to update your automation mesh: ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml install_receptor.yml After this playbook runs, your automation mesh is configured. To remove an instance from the mesh, see Removing instances . 2.4. Creating an instance group Use the following procedure to create a new instance group. Procedure From the navigation panel, select Administration Instance Groups . Select Add from the Add instance group list. Enter the appropriate details into the following fields: Name : Names must be unique and must not be named "controller". Policy instance minimum : Enter the minimum number of instances to automatically assign to this group when new instances come online. Policy instance percentage : Use the slider to select a minimum percentage of instances to automatically assign to this group when new instances come online. Note Policy instance fields are not required to create a new instance group. If you do not specify values, then the Policy instance minimum and Policy instance percentage default to 0. Max concurrent jobs : Specify the maximum number of forks that can be run for any given job. Max forks : Specify the maximum number of concurrent jobs that can be run for any given job. Note The default value of 0 for Max concurrent jobs and Max forks denotes no limit. For more information, see Instance group capacity limits in the Automation controller Administration Guide . Click Save . When you have successfully created the instance group the Details tab of the newly created instance group remains, enabling you to review and edit your instance group information. This is the same screen that opens when you click the Edit icon from the Instance Groups list view. You can also edit Instances and review Jobs associated with this instance group: 2.5. Associating instances to an instance group Procedure Select the Instances tab of the Instance Groups window. Click Associate . Click the checkbox to one or more available instances from the list to select the instances you want to associate with the instance group: In the following example, the instances added to the instance group displays along with information about their capacity: 2.6. Running jobs on execution nodes You must specify where jobs are run, or they default to running in the control cluster. To do this, set up a Job Template. For more information on Job Templates, see Job Templates in the Automation controller User Guide . Procedure The Templates list view shows job templates that are currently available. From this screen you can launch , edit , and copy a workflow job template. Select the job you want and click the icon. Select the Instance Group on which you want to run the job. Note that a System Administrator must grant you or your team permissions to be able to use an instance group in a job template. If you select multiple jobs templates, the order in which you select them sets the execution precedence. Click . Click Launch . 2.7. Pulling the secret for OpenShift Container Platform deployments Note This does not apply to Ansible Automation Platform on Microsoft Azure. If you are using the default execution environment provided with automation controller to run on remote execution nodes, you must add a pull secret in automation controller that contains the credential for pulling the execution environment image. To do this, create a pull secret on the automation controller namespace and configure the ee_pull_credentials_secret parameter in the Operator as follows: Procedure Create a secret using the following command: oc create secret generic ee-pull-secret \ --from-literal=username=<username> \ --from-literal=password=<password> \ --from-literal=url=registry.redhat.io oc edit automationcontrollers <instance name> Add ee_pull_credentials_secret and ee-pull-secret to the specification using: spec.ee_pull_credentials_secret=ee-pull-secret To manage instances from the automation controller UI, you must have System Administrator or System Auditor permissions. 2.8. Removing Instances From the Add Instances page , you can add, remove or run health checks on your nodes. Note You must follow the procedures for installing RHEL packages for any additional nodes you create. If you peer this additional node to an existing hop node, you must also install the Install Bundle on each node. Use the check boxes to an instance to select it to remove it, or run a health check against it. Note If a node is removed using the UI, then the node is "removed" and does not show a status. If you delete the VM of the node before it is removed in the UI, it will show an error. You only need to reinstall the Install Bundle if the topology changes the communication pattern, that is, hop nodes change or you add nodes. When a button is disabled, you do not have permission for that particular action. Contact your Administrator to grant you the required level of access. If you are able to remove an instance, you receive a prompt for confirmation. Note You can still remove an instance even if it is active and jobs are running on it. Automation controller waits for jobs running on this node to complete before removing it. 2.9. Upgrading receptors A software update addresses any issues or bugs to provide a better experience of working with the technology. Anyone with administrative rights can update the receptor on an execution node. Red Hat recommends performing updates to the receptor after any Ansible Automation Platform control plane updates. This ensures you are using the latest version. Best practice is to perform regular updates outside of any updates to the control plane. Procedure Check the current receptor version: receptor --version Update the receptor: sudo dnf update ansible-runner receptor -y Note To upgrade all packages (not just the receptor), use dnf update , then reboot with reboot . Verify the installation. After the update is complete, check the receptor version again to verify the update: receptor --version Restart the receptor service: sudo systemctl restart receptor Ensure the receptor is working correctly and is properly connected to the controller or other nodes in the system.

Commands:
ssh [username]@[host_ip_address]
ssh ec2-user@10.0.0.6
sudo subscription-manager register --auto-attach
sudo subscription-manager register
subscription-manager repos --enable ansible-automation-platform-2.4-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms for RHEL 8 subscription-manager repos --enable ansible-automation-platform-2.4-for-rhel-9-x86_64-rpms for RHEL 9
sudo dnf upgrade -y
sudo dnf install -y ansible-core
receptor-ca.crt work-public-key.pem receptor.key install_receptor.yml inventory.yml group_vars/all.yml requirements.yml
ansible-galaxy collection install -r requirements.yml
all: hosts: remote-execution: ansible_host: 10.0.0.6 ansible_user: <username> # user provided ansible_ssh_private_key_file: ~/.ssh/<id_rsa>
ansible_ssh_common_args: <your ssh ProxyCommand setting>
ansible-galaxy collection install ansible.receptor
ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=27199/tcp
ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml install_receptor.yml
create secret generic ee-pull-secret --from-literal=username=<username> --from-literal=password=<password> --from-literal=url=registry.redhat.io edit automationcontrollers <instance name>
spec.ee_pull_credentials_secret=ee-pull-secret
receptor --version
sudo dnf update ansible-runner receptor -y
receptor --version
sudo systemctl restart receptor