So in the previous series of articles, I have discussed what Ansible Execution Environment (EE) is, and how it is being consumed in the Automation Controller.

But really, how can I tell whether it is being ran or not?

Simple!
This can be validated by running “watch podman ps” on (a) execution node(s).

Below are 3 screenshots from moments of “before”, “during”, “after” a sample automation execution.

Command to run:

# su - awx
# watch podman ps

Before:

During:

After:

As you can see from the above, execution environment is dynamically spun up as a container and cleaned up right after the execution is completed.