Blog · 2026-10-30 · Gardience Engineering

Moving from AWX or Ansible Automation Platform: a step-by-step blueprint

Import your AWX or AAP projects, job templates, surveys, inventories, and schedules into Gardience, keep your playbooks in Git unchanged, and drop WinRM, SSH keys, and per-node pricing. With a sample repository to try first.

AWX upgrades are hard work and Ansible Automation Platform is priced per node. If either is why you are looking, this is how a move to Gardience goes, with a sample repository you can import first to see exactly what carries over.

What changes and what does not#

• Your playbooks do not change. They stay in Git, and Gardience runs them from there.
• How Gardience reaches machines changes. It runs playbooks over the Salt agent, so you need no WinRM listeners, SSH keys, or machine credentials stored in the controller.
• The price model changes. One flat price for the fleet, not per node. See the calculator.

Step 1: try the sample#

Import awx-export-sample.json on a free 10-machine install. It has a job template with a survey, limit, tags, and extra variables, a check-mode template, an inventory with groups, two schedules, a machine credential, and a workflow, so you see every case: what imports, what becomes something else, and what does not carry over.

Step 2: export from AWX or AAP#

pip install awxkit
export CONTROLLER_HOST=https://awx.example.com CONTROLLER_USERNAME=you CONTROLLER_PASSWORD=...
awx export --projects --job_templates --inventory --schedules > awx.json

Step 3: preview, then import#

In Gardience, open Automation > Projects, choose the file under Import from AWX or Ansible Automation Platform, and choose Preview. Nothing is created until you choose Import.

Step 4: what you do by hand#

The preview lists each of these, so nothing is missed silently:

• Repository tokens are not in exports. Put each one in the Gardience vault and set it on its project.
• Workflow templates become Gardience workflows, rebuilt from the imported runbooks. Approval steps carry over as approval steps.
• Teams and roles map to Gardience roles and scopes, set up once.
• Notifications go to Gardience's notification settings.
• Custom execution environments are not imported. If a playbook needs extra collections, add them to the project's requirements.yml.

Step 5: run side by side, then switch#

1. Turn on one imported schedule at a time, starting with read-only templates such as reports and check-mode runs.
2. Run each important job template once in check mode from Gardience and compare the result with AWX.
3. When the results match, turn the AWX schedule off and the Gardience one on.
4. Keep AWX running read-only until a full patch cycle has passed.

Imported schedules start turned off on purpose, so an import never starts work on your machines by itself.

What you gain on the way#

• A bill that stops growing per node: at 1,000 servers, Gardience Team is $15,000 a year, flat, against $192,500 at list for AAP Premium. Every price, with sources.
• Windows playbooks with no WinRM.
• Patching, CVEs with CISA KEV, CIS and STIG baselines, and CMMC evidence in the same console.
• Two-person approvals, change windows, and a tamper-evident audit log for every run.
• gdn for your terminal and pipelines, and a GitHub Action.

Full reference: Ansible playbooks: import from AWX or AAP.