Using Ansible in RHEL 8.6 and later

Updated

Note: this article is intended for RHEL customers. Customers using Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) should refer to the AAP product documentation.

RHEL 8.0 - 8.5 provided access to a separate Ansible repository that contains Ansible Engine 2.9 in order to enable Red Hat provided and generated automation based on Ansible. The scope of support, when utilizing Ansible Engine without an Ansible subscription, is limited to running Ansible playbooks created or generated by Red Hat products, such as RHEL System Roles, Insights remediation playbooks, and OpenSCAP Ansible remediation playbooks. Other use cases, including utilizing the other Ansible modules and plugins included with Ansible Engine 2.9 is outside of the scope of support.

RHEL 8.6 has introduced Ansible Core, which contains the Ansible command line tools, such as the ansible-playbook and ansible commands, and a small set of Content from docs.ansible.com is not included.builtin Ansible plugins. The scope of support for Ansible Core in RHEL remains the same: Ansible Core is provided to enable Ansible automation content written or generated by Red Hat products. Ansible Core will provide all needed functionality for customers utilizing supported RHEL Ansible content, such as RHEL System Roles and Insights remediation playbooks. The Ansible Engine repository is still available on RHEL 8.6, however it will not receive any security or bug fix updates past September 29, 2023, and may not be compatible with Ansible automation content included in RHEL 8.6 and later.

Customers might be impacted by the move from Ansible Engine to Ansible Core if they have been operating outside of the scope of support and utilizing the Ansible modules and plugins included with Ansible Engine 2.9, most of which are no longer available in Ansible Core. For these customers, playbooks that previously ran on Ansible Engine 2.9 might generate error messages related to missing plugins or modules. These customers are encouraged to speak with their Red Hat account team about the Ansible Automation Platform subscription.

Ansible Engine and Ansible Core cannot be installed simultaneously on a RHEL 8 system.

To move from Ansible Engine to Ansible Core on RHEL 8.6, follow these steps:

  • Ensure the system is running RHEL 8.6:
# cat /etc/redhat-release
  • Uninstall Ansible Engine 2.9:
# yum remove ansible
  • Disable the ansible-2-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms repository:
# subscription-manager repos --disable ansible-2-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms

# yum install ansible-core

Running RHEL System Roles playbooks locally
Note that there can be an issue when running a RHEL System Roles playbook locally using the implicit localhost. For more information see RHEL System Roles playbooks fail when run on localhost

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