# Can a Remote Execution Node launch Pods instead of running ansible-runner ?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-a-remote-execution-node-launch-pods-instead-of-running-ansible-runner/44657>\
**Category:** Get Help\
**Tags:** kubernetes, awx, ee\
**Created:** [October 9, 2025, 9:10pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-a-remote-execution-node-launch-pods-instead-of-running-ansible-runner/44657 "2025-10-09T21:10:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mrik974](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/mrik974/32/9626_2.png) [@mrik974](https://forum.ansible.com/u/mrik974)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2025, 9:10pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-a-remote-execution-node-launch-pods-instead-of-running-ansible-runner/44657/1 "2025-10-09T21:10:18Z")

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Hi,  
I’m new to the concept of remote execution node, and I’ve setup my first node a few weeks ago.  
I’m designing a concept of a microk8s, or k3s (or actually anything smaller than k8s) tool machine, in order to access, monitor and control a remote environment.  
Of course AWX would be in the mix, and thus I have a question. Can I configure the receptor of a remote execution node so it launches pods instead of directly running `ansible-runner` ?  
I saw that receptor has a configuration for kubernetes, in the `work-kubernetes` stanza, but I don’t know how to use a receptor configured this way via AWX…  
I also see that I can create “container groups” in AWX, but I can’t add instances…  
I’m struggling to find any documentation about it all.

Any tip ?

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**Author:** ![johan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dec6dc/32.png) [@johan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/johan)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2025, 8:37am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-a-remote-execution-node-launch-pods-instead-of-running-ansible-runner/44657/2 "2025-10-10T08:37:23Z")

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Hello, you have below a good tutorial about basic receptor / ansible-runner usage which could be a good starting point :

> [@Ansible-runner and receptor: The hard way](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-runner-and-receptor-the-hard-way/1129):
>
> After playing around with Ansible Automation platform and AWX for some time now, I decided to get under the hood and figure out how the platform operates at scale and how job are executed on remote nodes Ansible-runner According to the Ansibe-runner documentation “Ansible Runner is a tool and python library that helps when interfacing with Ansible directly or as part of another system whether that be through a container image interface, as a standalone tool, or as a Python module that can be im…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mrik974](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/mrik974/32/9626_2.png) [@mrik974](https://forum.ansible.com/u/mrik974)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2025, 1:15pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-a-remote-execution-node-launch-pods-instead-of-running-ansible-runner/44657/3 "2025-10-10T13:15:00Z")

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Thank you.  
Receptor works out of the box with ansible-runner, and that’s what seems to be leveraged by default with AWX.

When I create a new runner on AWX, I have to download a package that automatically deploys, and configures the receptor on what I call the “runner machine”, i.e. the VM that will execute jobs.

And indeed, it configures the receptor to run ansible-runner with the “worker” command.

But, in the receptor configuration, I noticed that, side by side with the `work-command` stanza, there’s also a `work-kubernetes`. Sign for me that the receptor can also run kubernetes pods instead of directly launching `ansible-runner`.

Also, on AWX, there’s the notion of “Container Group”, that allows me to create a Pod Configuration. Actually, the default pod configuration is to launch an `ansible-runner` image. The pods are launched locally, meaning on the Kubernetes cluster where AWX is setup. But I don’t understand how to configure it to be launched remotely

So :

- I can remotely use receptor but it launches `ansible-runner` directly on the target VM
- I can locally tell AWX to launch Kubernetes Pods

But I can’t tell AWX to use a receptor to launch Kubernetes Pods ?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![johan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dec6dc/32.png) [@johan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/johan)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2025, 2:39pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-a-remote-execution-node-launch-pods-instead-of-running-ansible-runner/44657/4 "2025-10-10T14:39:01Z")

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Haven’t touched this configuration since more than a year, but in my environment, we use Ansible Automation Platform to launch jobs on Openshift.

To do so, we had to configure in openshift a service account (with create privileges in an AAP namespace), and generate a token for it.

Then, on AAP, we configured a credential from the type “Openshift or Kubernetes API Bearer token”, which includes the Openshift API URL and the token.

Besides, we created a container group, with the previously defined credential, and a yaml specification like this one :

```auto
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  namespace: target-namespace
spec:
  containers:
    - image: registry.redhat.io/ee-minimal-rhel8:latest
      name: worker
      args:
        - ansible-runner
        - worker
        - '--private-data-dir=/runner'
      resources:
        requests:
          cpu: 250m
          memory: 100Mi

```

After that, when configuring a job template, we were able to selected this containergroup as a target. This pops up a temporary ‘automation-job’ on openshift, which only exists during the execution of the playbook it includes.

Should be similar for AWX/Kubernetes 🙂

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mrik974](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/mrik974/32/9626_2.png) [@mrik974](https://forum.ansible.com/u/mrik974)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2025, 8:23am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-a-remote-execution-node-launch-pods-instead-of-running-ansible-runner/44657/5 "2025-10-14T08:23:46Z")

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Thank you, but I think we are misunderstanding each other.  
I got this, what I don’t understand yet is how to remotely launch the pods (ie how to transfer those pod creation orders to a receptor).  
The assumption here is that my AWX instance does not have direct access to my Kubernetes cluster.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![iwt-cmd](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/iwt-cmd/32/9120_2.png) [@iwt-cmd](https://forum.ansible.com/u/iwt-cmd)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2025, 1:29pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-a-remote-execution-node-launch-pods-instead-of-running-ansible-runner/44657/6 "2025-10-15T13:29:17Z")

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Hi @mrik974 ,

I think I’m following what you’re looking to do but to clarify, are you looking to have AWX use receptor to generate pods that persist on a K8s cluster after the AWX/receptor job is finished?

Best regards,

Joe