Backup/Restore – Ansible AWX – tower-cli

How to Backup Ansible AWX? Ansible Tower comes along with “setup.sh“ to backup the database. If you are using the AWX (Ansible Tower’s upstream project),  you could leverage tower-cli to take the object backups in the JSON format. You could also try this for Ansible Tower if the number of hosts are less than 100. In this article, we will walk through how to backup the AWX and restore it. If you do not have the towe-cli module, install it using pip module.

Here are some of the screenshots which took before deleting those objects.

tower cli configuration:

[root@ansible-server ~]# tower-cli config

# User options (set with `tower-cli config`; stored in ~/.tower_cli.cfg).
host: http://192.168.3.151:80
username: admin
password: password
verify_ssl: False

# Defaults.
format: human
certificate:
verbose: False
description_on: False
oauth_token:
use_token: False
color: True

[root@ansible-server ~]#

Backup Ansibe AWX / Tower Configuration:

1. Execute the following command to take the complete AWX objects backup in flat file. You could see that backup created in JSON format.

[root@ansible-server ~]# tower-cli receive --all >  27032018.json
[root@ansible-server ~]# more 27032018.json
[
  {
    "asset_type": "organization",
    "name": "Default",
    "asset_relation": {
      "roles": [
        {
          "name": "Credential Admin",
          "team": [],
          "user": []
        },
        {
          "name": "Read",
          "team": [],
          "user": []
        },
        {
          "name": "Member",
          "team": [],
          "user": []
        },

We have successfully backup the Ansible AWX / Tower objects in to file.

How to Check the Backup integrity? Can we delete the objects and try to restore?

Here are the snapshots after deleting objects on AWX/Tower.

Restore from the backup:

1. Restore the config using tower-cli send command.

[root@ansible-server ~]# tower-cli send  27032018.json

USER [rajkumar] *****************************************************************************************************
Asset up to date

USER [raffic] ******************************************************************************************************
Asset up to date

USER [lingesh] **************************************************************************************
Asset up to date

USER [admin] ****************************************************************************************
Asset up to date

ORGANIZATION [Default] ***************************************************************************************************
Asset up to date
All roles are up to date

ORGANIZATION [UnixArena] ***************************************************************************************************
Created organization UnixArena
Added user rajkumar to Member role
Added user lingesh to Member role
Added user raffic to Member role
Added user lingesh to Admin role

TEAM [Database] ***********************************************************************************
Created team Database

TEAM [Unix] **************************************************************************************
Created team Unix

TEAM [Wintel] ************************************************************************************
Created team Wintel

CREDENTIAL [Demo Credential] *************************************************************************************************
Asset up to date
All roles are up to date

CREDENTIAL [UA-Linuxhost1] ************************************************************************************************
 [WARNING]: Setting password for UA-Linuxhost1 to 'password'
Created credential UA-Linuxhost1
Added user admin to Admin role

PROJECT [Demo Project] *********************************************************************************************
Asset up to date
All roles are up to date
All schedules are up to date

PROJECT [UnixArena_Project] *******************************************************************************************
Asset up to date
All roles are up to date
All schedules are up to date

INVENTORY [Demo Inventory] *******************************************************************************************
Asset up to date
All inventory host are up to date
All inventory inventory_source are up to date
All inventory groups are up to date
All roles are up to date

INVENTORY [Linux_UA_Hosts] *******************************************************************************************
Created inventory Linux_UA_Hosts
Unable to create inventory_source named  (Linux_UA_Hosts - 7) : The Tower server claims it was sent a bad request.

POST http://192.168.3.151:80/api/v2/inventory_sources/
Params: None
Data: {"name": " (Linux_UA_Hosts - 7)", "source": "file", "inventory": 3, "source_path": "/var/lib/awx/hosts_add"}

Response: {"detail":["Cannot set source_path if not SCM type."]}
Schedules are up to date
All inventory groups are up to date
All roles are up to date

JOB TEMPLATE [Check Filesystem usage on hosts] *********************************************************************************************
Created job_template Check Filesystem usage on hosts
Added user raffic to Execute role
Added team Unix to Admin role
Added schedule Test
Updating survey
All labels are up to date
All extra creds are up to date

JOB TEMPLATE [Demo Job Template] ********************************************************************************************
Asset up to date
All roles are up to date
All schedules are up to date
Survey up to date
All labels are up to date
All extra creds are up to date

JOB TEMPLATE [Grant Root access to Normal user] *******************************************************************************************
Created job_template Grant Root access to Normal user
All roles are up to date
All schedules are up to date
Survey up to date
All labels are up to date
All extra creds are up to date

JOB TEMPLATE [Servers ping test] ******************************************************************************************
Created job_template Servers ping test
All roles are up to date
All schedules are up to date
Survey up to date
All labels are up to date
All extra creds are up to date

WORKFLOW [Test workflow] **************************************************************************
Checking on workflow_nodes
Created workflow Test workflow
All roles are up to date
All schedules are up to date
Survey up to date
All labels are up to date
Building new workflow nodes
Building workflow node relations

PLAY RECAP ******************************************************************
    ok=45    changed=21    warnings=1    failed=1

[root@ansible-server ~]#

We have successfully restored the complete AWX/tower objects. You could log in to AWX/Tower portal and check the object status.

You could face the issue with credentials its likely due to encrypted nature. You might need to update the password again after tower-cli restore.

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