DevOps
Automation
Scheduling

Replace Cron Jobs with AWX: Scheduling via API Endpoints

Cron jobs are simple, but they can be brittle at scale. This guide shows how to move scheduling out of application code and into AWX by calling endpoints, improving flexibility, observability, and control.

TL;DR

Replace in-code cron jobs with AWX schedules that call your service endpoints. You gain centralized alerting, manual execution, reporting, and security controls. The tradeoffs are extra infrastructure, network dependencies, and the need for idempotent APIs.

9 min read

LogNroll Team

Engineering & DevOps

Why Replace Cron Jobs?

Cron jobs inside application code are easy to add, but they grow into hard-to-debug, hard-to-audit systems as your workload scales. Moving scheduling into AWX lets you treat job orchestration as infrastructure, not application logic.

Replacing cron jobs with AWX workflow automation

The Architecture Shift

From:

App Code -> Cron Scheduler -> Internal Job Logic

To:

AWX Schedule -> API Endpoint -> Job Logic

What is AWX Doing Here?

AWX (the open-source upstream of Ansible Tower) acts as your orchestrator. It triggers jobs on a schedule, stores run history, sends alerts, and allows manual execution with parameters.

Flexibility

Change schedules and job logic without app deploys.

Alerting

Centralized notifications on failures and retries.

Manual Execution

Run jobs on demand with parameterized inputs.

Reporting

Historical runs, success rates, durations, and audit logs.

Security

Credentials managed in AWX and not embedded in code.

Scaling

Scale job execution independently of app instances.

Testing

Run jobs in staging via AWX without modifying app cron.

AWX Features That Replace Cron Pain Points

AWX does more than schedule. These built-in capabilities give you the operational controls that cron lacks when jobs become business-critical.

Manual Execution & Approvals

Run jobs on demand, pause workflows for manual approval, and require human confirmation before risky steps.

Surveys & Parameter Inputs

Collect runtime parameters from operators without changing code or deployment settings.

Auditing & Reporting

Run history, success rates, durations, and audit trails are captured automatically.

RBAC & Credential Vaults

Role-based access control with centrally managed credentials and secrets.

Workflows & Dependencies

Chain jobs with conditional logic, fan-out, retries, and failure handling.

Notifications & Webhooks

Native alerting to Slack/email/webhooks for failures, approvals, and completions.

Scaling & Scheduler Synchronization

When you scale your service horizontally, cron schedules are replicated across instances. That often leads to duplicate executions, race conditions, and drift when clocks or deployments are not in sync. AWX centralizes scheduling so only one orchestrator triggers the job, eliminating scheduler conflicts.

Horizontal Scale Safety

With AWX, a single scheduler controls execution regardless of how many app instances you run. You avoid duplicate runs caused by per-pod cron jobs.

Time & Drift Consistency

Centralized schedules prevent clock drift or deployment timing issues from triggering jobs at inconsistent times across nodes.

Single Source of Truth

AWX becomes the authoritative scheduler. Changes are applied once and instantly reflected across environments.

Safer Failover

In-node failover can accidentally double-run cron. AWX can handle retries explicitly and track run state to prevent duplicate execution.

How It Works in Practice

  1. Create an AWX template for the job (e.g., run cleanup, billing, sync).
  2. Configure a schedule in AWX (cron-like but managed centrally).
  3. AWX calls your service endpoint with parameters and auth.
  4. Your service executes the job logic and returns a status.
  5. AWX records the run, sends alerts on failure, and stores logs.

Endpoint Contract (Example)

POST /jobs/daily-reconciliation
Authorization: Bearer <awx-token>
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "runId": "awx-2026-01-15T00:00:00Z",
  "dryRun": false,
  "range": "previous_day"
}

// Response
{
  "status": "ok",
  "processed": 12493,
  "durationMs": 8420
}

Make endpoints idempotent so AWX retries are safe.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • • Central scheduling across all services
  • • Unified alerting and run history
  • • Manual runs with parameters
  • • Better audit trails and reporting
  • • Secrets and credentials managed in one place
  • • Scales independently from app instances

Cons

  • • Additional infrastructure to run and maintain
  • • Requires reliable network access to endpoints
  • • Requires robust API authentication
  • • Endpoint logic must be idempotent
  • • Slightly higher latency than in-process cron

Design Checklist

  • • Use signed tokens or mTLS for AWX → API calls
  • • Make jobs idempotent and retry-safe
  • • Add timeouts and circuit breakers
  • • Return structured JSON responses
  • • Separate job endpoints from public APIs
  • • Capture logs and metrics for every run
  • • Provide a dry-run mode for testing

When to Keep Cron

Cron is still fine for small apps, single-node deployments, and simple maintenance tasks. If you have minimal scheduling needs and no operational overhead for alerting/reporting, cron can be the right choice.

Per-Second or Perpetual Schedulers

If your job must run every second or continuously (perpetual workers, event loops, stream processors), AWX is not the right tool. AWX schedules at minute-level granularity and is optimized for discrete jobs, not high-frequency or always-on workloads.

Better fits for per-second or perpetual workloads:

  • • Queue-driven workers (e.g., message queues, job runners)
  • • Stream processors and event-driven services
  • • Systemd timers or dedicated schedulers with sub-minute precision

Conclusion

Replacing cron jobs with AWX gives you operational control: better alerting, manual execution, reporting, security posture, and scalable orchestration. The cost is extra infrastructure and a need for solid API design, but for teams managing multiple services and critical workloads, the tradeoff is usually worth it.

Additional Resources