Documentation

13. Tower Configuration

You can configure various Tower settings within the Tower user interface, in the following tabs:

  • Authentication: Enable simplified login for your Tower applications.
  • Jobs: Update settings pertaining to Jobs within Tower.
  • System: Define system-level features and functions.
  • User Interface: Set the level of data collection for use in usability analytics; and configure custom logos and login messages.
  • License: Import or view your product license.

Each tab contains fields with a Reset button, allowing you to revert any value entered back to the default value. Reset All allows you to revert all the values in the Edit Tower Configuration to their factory default values.

Save applies changes you make, but it does not exit the edit dialog. Click the Settings (settings) icon to return to the Configure Tower screen.

13.1. Authentication

Through the Tower user interface, you can set up a simplified login through various authentication types: GitHub, Google, LDAP, RADIUS, and SAML. After you create and register your developer application with the appropriate service, you can set up authorizations for them. Since configuration files are now saved to the postgres DB in Ansible Tower 3.1 instead of flat files, setting up authorizations in the Ansible Tower User Interface is the recommended method.

  1. From the left navigation bar, click the Settings (settings) icon.
  2. The Authentication tab displays initially by default. Select the appropriate authentication type from the drop-down list.
_images/configure-tower-auth.png

Different authentication types require you to enter different information. Be sure to include all the information as required.

Note

For more detail about each authentication type, refer to the Setting Up Authentication section of the Administration Guide.

  1. Click Save to apply the settings or Cancel to abandon the changes.

13.2. Jobs

The Jobs tab allows you to configure the types of modules that are allowed to be used by Tower’s Ad Hoc Commands feature, set limits on the number of jobs that can be scheduled, define their output size, and other details pertaining to working with Jobs in Tower.

  1. From the Settings (settings) Menu screen, click on Configure Tower.
  2. Select the Jobs tab.
  3. Set the configurable options from the fields provided. Click the tooltip help icon next to the field that you need additional information or details about.

Note

The value for Default Job Timeout is in seconds.

_images/configure-tower-jobs.png
  1. Click Save to apply the settings or Cancel to abandon the changes.

13.3. System

The System tab allows you to define the base URL for the Tower host, configure alerts, enable activity capturing, control visibility of users, enable certain Tower features and functionality through a license file, and configure logging aggregation options.

  1. From the Settings (settings) Menu screen, click on Configure Tower.
  2. Select the System tab.
  3. Select an option from the Sub Category drop-down menu list:

  • Activity Stream: enable or disable activity stream.

  • Logging: configure logging options based on the type you choose:

    _images/configure-tower-system-logging-types.png

    For more information about each of the logging aggregation types, refer to the Tower Logging and Aggregation section of the Ansible Tower Administration Guide.

  • Misc. System: define the base URL for the Tower host, enable tower administration alerts, and allow all users to be visible to organization administrators.

  1. Set the configurable options from the fields provided. Click the tooltip help icon next to the field that you need additional information or details about.
_images/configure-tower-system.png

Note

The Allow External Users to Create Oauth2 Tokens setting is disabled by default. This ensures external users cannot create their own tokens. If you enable then disable it, any tokens created by external users in the meantime will still exist, and are not automatically revoked.

  1. Click Save to apply the settings or Cancel to abandon the changes.

13.4. User Interface

The User Interface tab allows you to set Tower analytics settings, as well as configure custom logos and login messages.

_images/configure-tower-ui.png

13.4.1. Usability Analytics and Data Collection

In Ansible Tower version 2.4.0, a behind the scenes functionality was added to Tower to collect usability data. This software was introduced to better understand how Tower users specifically interact with Tower, to help enhance future releases, and to continue streamlining your user experience.

Only users installing a trial of Tower or a fresh installation of Tower are opted-in for this data collection.

If you want to change how you participate in this analytics collection, you can opt out or change your settings using the Configure Tower user interface.

Ansible Tower collects user data automatically to help improve the Tower product. You can control the way Tower collects data by setting your participation level in the User Interface tab.

  1. Click the Settings (settings) icon from the left navigation bar.
  1. Select the User Interface tab.
  2. Select the desired level of data collection from the Analytics Tracking State drop-down list:
  • Off: Prevents any data collection.
  • Anonymous: Enables data collection without your specific user data.
  • Detailed: Enables data collection including your specific user data.
  1. Click Save to apply the settings or Cancel to abandon the changes.

Note

This setting was previously configured via PENDO, which is no longer supported.

13.4.2. Custom Logos and Images

You can also add a custom logo by uploading an image; and supply a custom login message from the User Interface screen in Configure Tower.

_images/configure-tower-ui-logo-filled.png

Refer to the tooltips (viewdocs) for acceptable formats.

_images/configure-tower-ui-angry-spud-login.png

13.5. License

  1. From the Settings (settings) Menu screen, click on Configure Tower.
  2. Select the License tab.

Tower requires a valid license to run. If you did not receive a license from Ansible directly or via email, or have issues with the license you received, refer to http://www.ansible.com/license for free and paid license options (including free trial licenses) or contact Ansible via the Red Hat Customer portal at https://access.redhat.com/.

Note

To successfully add your license, you must be logged on as the Superuser. Otherwise, the operation will fail.

no license

To add your license:

  1. Save your license (or save the license contents to a text file locally, if needed).
  2. Click the Browse button and navigate to the location where the license file is saved to upload it. The uploaded license may be a plain text file or a JSON file, and must include properly formatted JSON code.
  3. Once uploaded, check to agree to the End User License Agreement and click Submit.

Once your license has been accepted, Tower navigates you to the main Ansible interface for the Dashboard (which you can access by clicking on the Ansible Tower logo at the top left of the screen as well).

For later reference, you can view this license from the License tab of the Configure Tower screen, accessible through the Settings (settings) icon from the left navigation bar.

license accepted