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1. Tower Licensing, Updates, and Support

Ansible Tower (“Ansible Tower”) is a software product provided as part of an annual Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform subscription entered into between you and Red Hat, Inc. (“Red Hat”).

Ansible is an open source software project and is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3, as detailed in the Ansible source code: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/COPYING

Starting with Ansible Tower 3.8, you must have valid subscriptions attached before installing the Ansible Automation Platform. See Attaching Subscriptions for detail.

1.1. Support

Red Hat offers support to paid Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform customers.

If you or your company has purchased a subscription for Ansible Automation Platform, you can contact the support team at https://access.redhat.com. To better understand the levels of support which match your Ansible Automation Platform subscription, refer to Subscription Types. For details of what is covered under an Ansible Automation Platform subscription, please see the Scopes of Support at: https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/ansible-tower#scope-of-coverage-4 and https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/ansible-engine.

1.2. Trial / Evaluation

While a license is required for Ansible Tower to run, there is no fee for a trial license.

  • Trial licenses for Red Hat Ansible Automation are available at: http://ansible.com/license

  • Support is not included in a trial license or during an evaluation of the Tower Software.

1.3. Subscription Types

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is provided at various levels of support and number of machines as an annual Subscription.

All Subscription levels include regular updates and releases of Ansible Tower, Ansible, and any other components of the Platform.

For more information, contact Ansible via the Red Hat Customer portal at https://access.redhat.com/ or at http://www.ansible.com/contact-us/.

1.4. Node Counting in Licenses

The Tower license defines the number of Managed Nodes that can be managed as part of a Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform subscription. A typical license will say ‘License Count: 500’, which sets the maximum number of Managed Nodes at 500.

For more information on managed node requirements for licensing, please see https://access.redhat.com/articles/3331481.

1.5. Attaching Subscriptions

Starting with Tower 3.8, you must have valid subscriptions attached before installing the Ansible Automation Platform. Attaching an Ansible Automation Platform subscription enables Automation Hub repositories. A valid subscription needs to be attached to the Automation Hub node only. Other nodes do not need to have a valid subscription/pool attached, even if the [automationhub] group is blank, given this is done at the repos_el role level and that this role is run on both [tower] and [automationhub] hosts.

To find out the pool_id of your Ansible Automation Platform subscription:

#subscription-manager list --available --all | grep "Ansible Automation Platform" -B 3 -A 6

The command returns the following:

Subscription Name: Red Hat Ansible Automation, Premium (5000 Managed Nodes)
Provides: Red Hat Ansible Engine
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
SKU: MCT3695
Contract: ********
Pool ID: ********************
Provides Management: No
Available: 4999
Suggested: 1

To attach this subscription:

#subscription-manager attach --pool=<pool_id>

If this is properly done, and all nodes have Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform attached, then it will find the Automation Hub repositories correctly.

To check whether the subscription was successfully attached:

#subscription-manager list --consumed

To remove this subscription:

#subscription-manager remove --pool=<pool_id>

1.6. Tower Component Licenses

To view the license information for the components included within Ansible Tower, refer to /usr/share/doc/ansible-tower-<version>/README where <version> refers to the version of Ansible Tower you have installed.

To view a specific license, refer to /usr/share/doc/ansible-tower-<version>/*.txt, where * is replaced by the license file name to which you are referring.