Although the Ansible command-line tools provide logging options, these are not enabled by default and as a result, the run output of playbooks can be lost as soon as a terminal session is closed. This is not great in an enterprise scenario, particularly when an issue or outage occurs and a root cause analysis is required. 

AWX addresses this in two ways. First of all, every user must log in to the GUI before any actions can be performed. AWX can integrate with centralized accounting systems such as LDAP or Active Directory, or users can be defined locally on the AWX host. All actions in the UI are then tracked, and as such, it is possible to trace back playbook runs to specific users and indeed configuration changes. In an enterprise environment, this level of accountability and this kind of audit trail is a must-have.

Beyond this, AWX captures all of the output of every playbook run, along with key pieces of information such as which inventory the playbook was run against, what variables were passed to it (if any), and the date and time of the run. This means that if an issue occurs, AWX can provide a complete audit trail to help you find out what happened and when. 

Not only can AWX assist with auditing your automation, but it can also help with ensuring version control of your playbooks, as we shall discuss in the next section.