AWX in Action

What You'll Need: Hardware, OS, and Network

We will need 4 machines for this guide:

• awx-1: This is where we are going to install AWX. We may refer to this machine as the AWX machine, AWX server, control node, control plane, or AWX instance.
• awx-2: A second machine where we'll run an additional execution node. We won't touch it at first, but it comes into play later when we demonstrate how to scale AWX.
• nebula: A managed node. We will use AWX to run some playbooks against it.
• solara: Another managed node, used the same way as nebula.

and:

• Your personal machine: your laptop or desktop. I highly recommend using Linux or macOS. If you are using Windows, you can use WSL2 or a virtual machine with a Linux OS.

The following are the requirements for each machine:

• awx-1: In a production environment, you should have at least 2 vCPUs, 4 GB of RAM, and 10 GB of disk space. That said, I strongly recommend a minimum of 4 vCPUs and 8 GB of RAM to avoid potential performance issues. Disk needs depend on several factors — whether you use a local or external PostgreSQL database, the number of jobs you plan to run, and so on. In this guide, we'll use 4 vCPUs, 8 GB of RAM, and 10 GB of disk space. You can start small and scale up as needed.
• awx-2: Performance requirements depend on the number of jobs you'll run here. In this guide, we'll use 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM.
• nebula: This is a managed node, so it doesn't need a lot of resources. Any small machine will be fine, such as 1 vCPU and 2 GB of RAM.
• solara: Same as nebula.

CentOS Stream is the recommended OS for all machines. Use the same OS across the lab to keep things consistent with this guide.

We'll also use awx.example.com as the domain name for awx-1. Later, we'll tweak DNS resolution locally — through /etc/hosts on Linux/macOS or C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows — so the domain points to the correct IP. That step is covered later.

The following table summarizes the requirements for each machine: