# Confused about architecture: awx-web, aws-task, rabbitmq and memcached

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/confused-about-architecture-awx-web-aws-task-rabbitmq-and-memcached/29589>\
**Category:** AWX Project\
**Tags:** aws, awx\
**Created:** [February 1, 2019, 10:07am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/confused-about-architecture-awx-web-aws-task-rabbitmq-and-memcached/29589 "2019-02-01T10:07:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Juan\_A\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@Juan\_A\_S](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Juan_A_S)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2019, 10:07am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/confused-about-architecture-awx-web-aws-task-rabbitmq-and-memcached/29589/1 "2019-02-01T10:07:23Z")

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Hi all, after some local docker testing, using the docker-compose file located in [https://github.com/geerlingguy/awx-container](https://github.com/geerlingguy/awx-container), I am going to deploy a “real” environment, but I have some questions about the installation, because I can’t find the relations between docker images and the documentation:

- Is a memcached service needed? I don’t see this requirement in the Tower documentation [https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-tower/latest/html/quickinstall/prepare.html](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-tower/latest/html/quickinstall/prepare.html)
- What is the difference between awx-task and awx-web? There is no such differentiation in the Tower docs (If I understood well, all nodes are web and workers at the same time)
- Is a rabbitmq external service needed? According to documentation, a rabbitmq service is installed in each instance (and configured to talk to the other instances? plase confirm), so I don’t understand the externalization. Also, why in all documentation rabbitmq\_vhost is set to “tower”? Is this an alias to localhost created during provisioning?

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![Darkhan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/34f0e0/32.png) [@Darkhan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Darkhan)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2019, 11:21am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/confused-about-architecture-awx-web-aws-task-rabbitmq-and-memcached/29589/2 "2019-02-01T11:21:19Z")

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You will not find the answer to these questions in the tower documentation because tower installs natively, it does not run in containers.  
Yes, memcached is needed.  
awx-web is just the web interface, while awx-task is the backend.  
Yes, rabbitmq is needed, that’s were your jobs are put in a queue to be executed from. Also, be aware that awx does not work in a cluster with docker, if you plan to have more than one instance. You will need kubernetes or openshift for that.