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Release: Australia · Updated: 2026-03-12 · Official documentation · View source

Create an Ansible configuration management provider and run Discovery

Create an Ansible configuration management provider, and then run Discovery on the provider to find its resources.

Before you begin

  • Ensure to have an Ansible server and Ansible credentials.
  • If you want to use Ansible Tower version 3.6.x or higher, ensure to set the mid.cmp.ansible.api_version property to V2. You can access this property under the Properties section of the Mid Server module.
  • Role required: cloud_admin

About this task

Important: Starting with the Orlando release, the cloud provisioning blueprints are available on instances upgraded from a previous release, but you cannot create a blueprint. Existing blueprints and catalog items created from those blueprints remain unaffected and continue to work.

Procedure

  1. In the Cloud Admin Portal, navigate to Manage > Config Management.

  2. Select New.

  3. On the form fill in the fields.

    Note: Most information required to create an Ansible configuration management provider comes from the Ansible Tower server settings.

  1. Select Submit.

  2. Select the Ansible Tower configuration provider card.

Image omitted: config-providers.png
Config providers
  1. Select Discover Now to find the resources in the Ansible configuration management provider.

    Note: If you provision or otherwise change resources through the configuration management provider interface, you must manually run discovery again through the Config Providers page. You cannot create a scheduled discovery for configuration management providers.

    The discovered resources appear under Entities.

    The following Ansible Tower resources are discovered:

    • Ansible Inventory: Displays the discovered applications and virtual resources.
    • Cfg Installable: Displays theactual components that run when the applications install. For Ansible, the items in this list are job templates, which are also referred to as runlists in this form.
Image omitted: ansible-inventory.png
Example Ansible inventories
Image omitted: cfg-ansible-resources.png
Ansible resources
  1. Select Ansible Inventory to explore the contents.

    Note: Communicate the supported applications to users so they can select the correct application from the Hostgroup field in the Cloud User Portal. The Hostgroup field shows all possible applications (called Groups in Ansible), not just the ones that the configuration management provider supports. Therefore, the provisioning fails when the user selects an unsupported application.

Image omitted: ansible-tower-groups.png
Ansible Tower groups within an inventory

What to do next

After a user provisions a resource, the Stack Status indicates how the system runs through the Create node, Bootstrap, and ExecuteConfigPackage steps. You can obtain the IP address of a virtual machine in the User Portal by navigating to Stacks > {category} and selecting the new virtual machine. Open the configuration management provider server to see the newly provisioned resource on the node that the user specified.

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FieldDescription
NameDescriptive name for the configuration provider.
OrganizationAnsible Tower organization for access controlYou can obtain this information from the configuration management provider console.
URLURL of the Ansible Tower.Enter the full URL of the Ansible Tower including the `https://` protocol.
ProviderConfiguration provider type.Select Ansible Tower from the drop-down list.
Server TypeAnsible Tower server type.
CredentialCredentials to access the Ansible server. For more information on creating credential for Ansible server, see Ansible credentials.
VersionVersion of the configuration provider you are creating. Note: For Ansible Tower versions higher than 3.1.2, select 3.4.0 from the list.