Replace AWX/Tower with Foreman

hello,

I have several years with Foreman/puppet.
I would like to know if i can use foreman with ansible like foreman manages puppet ?

Im starting using ansible, and i think foreman does a great job with puppet.

Hello and welcome,

Can you explain what workflows you’re trying to implement?

If you help us better understand your deployment, we can provide better answers :slight_smile:

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i used foreman, to manage and run puppet manifest in linux servers.
like with puppet, i never used the console to run manifests.

all information that is manage with puppet is stored in foreman DB.

Hey,

I think you’re mixing a few things up here. Let’s see if we can untangle those.

Foreman is designed to manage the lifecycle of servers, and one part of the lifecycle is configuration, which can be done with Puppet, Ansible, Salt, Chef, whatever.

AWX/Tower is a workflow manager, based on Ansible. You can execute classical configuration management tasks with it, but you’re not limited to those.

Now to your question: You’re using Foreman with Puppet today, and would like to replace Puppet with Ansible, while keeping Foreman? Sure, that’s possible. You’ll have to rewrite all your Puppet manifests in Ansible, but Foreman will still be able to execute the result and keep your systems configured.

Does that make Foreman a replacement for AWX/Tower? No. While both can execute Ansible, the way they handle that is different. Foreman is very “server” focused (= make sure webserver on machine web01 is installed and configured), while AWX/Tower is “workflow” focused (= deploy App1 on the webserver cluster cluster01 and enable that in the loadbalancer).

Hope this helps

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One addition: You can use the Application Centric Deployment (foreman_acd) plugin to manage your Ansible playbooks and deploy and configure applications on multiple servers.

thanks for reply.

im new in ansible, and used foreman with puppet for several years. (just for configuration)
right now im in a new team working with ansible without tower or foreman (and no puppet)

i dont know if is the best or a good working solution, to use the foreman with ansible, just for configuration, to run playbooks from foreman, and have the configuration stored in foreman.

since theres no foreman or no tower is a fresh install of foreman to run playbooks that already exist

Hi @gabrielfsousa

I suppose, the decision is ultimately with you, and I’m not even sure if anyone here could tell you which option is the better tool, but if you have a scenario in mind that you’re curious about with Foreman, we can definitely speak to that :slight_smile:

You can take a look at these docs to get a better understanding of performing remote execution tasks with Foreman & Ansible:

https://docs.theforeman.org/nightly/Configuring_Ansible/index-foreman.html#getting-started-with-ansible_ansible

@ezr-ondrej recorded this video on Foreman and Remote execution:

You can also Integrate AWX with Foreman if you need to:

https://docs.theforeman.org/nightly/Configuring_Ansible/index-foreman.html#integrating-ansible-tower_ansible

Best of luck!

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the getting-started-with-ansible_ansible link is down.
is there other one ?

EDIT: found it -> Configuring Foreman to use Ansible

Sorry!
We are working hard on establishing these docs as the Foreman docs.
The links have changed a bit but should be stable now!

Perhaps it helps us to guide you if you tell us why you want to move away from Puppet.

im in a new team.
and on this team they decide to work with ansible ( 2 years ago), the MAIN reason was because it does not have an agent.