How to Install and Configure Ansible Automation Dashboard (On-Premise)

Introduction

Automation Dashboard is part of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) that lets you visualize, measure, and optimize your automation usage across multiple clusters. Think of it as the central view of everything automated in your environment — jobs, trends, activity, and growth over time.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to install and configure Automation Dashboard (on-premise) for AAP 2.5 running at aap25.lab.iamgini.com. The dashboard will be installed on a separate VM — automation-dashboard.lab.iamgini.com — using a containerized setup with an embedded PostgreSQL database.

Pre-Installation Notes

• The Automation Dashboard runs on port 8447 by default. You can change this in your inventory with:

  nginx_https_port=8447
  

TLS Certificates

• For simplicity, we’ll use self-signed TLS certificates. If you’re connecting the dashboard with an existing AAP instance, you might hit SSL validation issues.

You can disable SSL validation for the auth provider in your inventory:

aap_auth_provider_check_ssl=false

If you prefer to validate SSL properly, copy and trust your AAP CA certificate on the dashboard VM:

# Copy CA cert from AAP node
$ scp aap-ca.cert devops@automation-dashboard:~/aap-ca.cert

# Update the CA trust on automation-dashboard VM
$ sudo cp aap-ca.cert /etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/aap-ca.crt
$ sudo update-ca-trust

To confirm it’s trusted:

$ curl -v https://aap25.lab.iamgini.com/api/gateway/v1/ping/

Step 1: Prepare OAuth Application in AAP

Before installation, create an OAuth application inside your AAP:

1. Go to Access Management → OAuth Applications (https://aap25.lab.iamgini.com/access/applications).
2. Click Create OAuth Application.
3. Note down the Client ID and Client Secret — you’ll need these later.

Step 2: Download the Setup Bundle

Grab the installer from Red Hat’s download portal.

For this demo, I used the Red Hat Ansible Automation Dashboard Setup Bundle (2.6 for RHEL 9).

$ tar -xzvf ansible-automation-dashboard-containerized-setup-bundle-0.1-x86_64.tar.gz
$ cd ansible-automation-dashboard-containerized-setup/

Step 3: Prepare the Inventory and Secrets

Copy the example inventory and modify it to match your environment. A typical sample is provided below.

[automationdashboard]
automation-dashboard.lab.iamgini.com

[automationdashboard:vars]
aap_auth_provider_name=Ansible Automation Platform
aap_auth_provider_protocol=https
aap_auth_provider_aap_version=2.5
aap_auth_provider_check_ssl=true
initial_sync_days=1

aap_auth_provider_client_id='from_var_file'
aap_auth_provider_client_secret='from_var_file'
aap_auth_provider_host='from_var_file'

[database]
automation-dashboard.lab.iamgini.com

[all:vars]
postgresql_admin_username=postgres
postgresql_admin_password='from_encrypted_var_file'

registry_username='from_var_file'
registry_password='from_var_file'

dashboard_pg_containerized=True
dashboard_admin_password='from_encrypted_var_file'
dashboard_pg_host=automation-dashboard.lab.iamgini.com
dashboard_pg_username=aapdashboard
dashboard_pg_password='from_encrypted_var_file'
dashboard_pg_database=aapdashboard

bundle_install=false
bundle_dir='{{ lookup("ansible.builtin.env", "PWD") }}/bundle'

Here’s the layout I use — keeping sensitive values in separate files for clarity.

~/.config/aap-auth.yaml

aap_auth_provider_client_id: <client_id_from_AAP>
aap_auth_provider_client_secret: <client_secret_from_AAP>
aap_auth_provider_host: aap25.lab.iamgini.com

~/.config/registry.yaml

registry_username: '<registry_username>'
registry_password: '<registry_token>'

dashboard-credential.yaml

postgresql_admin_password: postgresadminsecretpass
dashboard_admin_password: aapadmin
dashboard_pg_password: aapdashboardpgadminsecretpass

Encrypt secrets with Ansible Vault:

$ ansible-vault encrypt dashboard-credential.yaml

Step 4: Run the Installer

Now run the installation playbook:

$ ansible-playbook -i inventory \
  ansible.containerized_installer.dashboard_install \
  -u devops \
  -e @~/.config/aap-auth.yaml \
  -e @~/.config/registry.yaml \
  -e @dashboard-credential.yaml \
  --ask-vault-password

After the playbook completes, the dashboard should be reachable at https://automation-dashboard.lab.iamgini.com:8447/

At this point, it’s running — but not yet connected to your AAP cluster.

Step 5: Integrate with Ansible Automation Platform

To visualize automation data, integrate AAP with your new dashboard.

1. In your AAP dashboard, create a token (use a service account if available).
   • OAuth Application: automation-dashboard-sso
   • Scope: read

Copy the generated token and we will use this for clusters.yaml configuration in the next step.

Create clusters.yaml

---
clusters:
  - protocol: https
    address: aap25.lab.iamgini.com
    port: 443
    access_token: <your_token>
    verify_ssl: false
    sync_schedules:
      - name: Every 1 minute sync
        rrule: DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Ljubljana:20250630T070000 FREQ=MINUTELY;INTERVAL=1
        enabled: true

Step 6: Apply Cluster Configuration

Copy the clusters.yaml file into the running dashboard container:

$ podman cp clusters.yaml automation-dashboard-web:/
$ podman exec automation-dashboard-web /venv/bin/python ./manage.py setclusters /clusters.yaml

Then test data synchronization:

$ podman exec automation-dashboard-web /venv/bin/python ./manage.py syncdata --since=2025-04-01 --until=2025-12-31
Successfully created Sync task for Cluster https://aap25.lab.iamgini.com:443.

Step 7: Access the Dashboard

Now open your browser and visit: https://automation-dashboard.lab.iamgini.com:8447/

• You’ll be redirected to the AAP SSO login page.
• After login, you’ll be sent back to the dashboard, where you’ll start seeing aggregated data and trends.

Learn More

To explore dashboards, filters, and reporting features, check the official guide: 👉 Filter and save automation data for reporting

• You can check out sample configuration files and inventory examples used in this guide here: github.com/iamgini/ansible-aap-demos/tree/main/ansible-automation-dashboard.
• Automation dashboard and automation analytics

Final Thoughts

That’s it — your Automation Dashboard is up and running on-prem with containerized services. In production, replace the embedded database with an external enterprise PostgreSQL instance and use trusted SSL certificates.

This setup gives you a single pane of glass to track automation growth, identify trends, and improve ROI on your automation efforts.

Troubleshooting

As mentioned earlier, if you’re using SSL validation and the CA certificate isn’t properly distributed, you might run into SSL-related errors.

Here’s an example of what those errors could look like (for reference):