Ansible-inventory

Inventory of managed nodes

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-manage-multistage-environments-with-ansible Inventory is defined in /etc/ansible/hosts file. It allows you to define your managed hosts by hostname or IP address, and group them, such as "my_webservers_group" in our example in INI format.

Groups of groups, hierarchies, is also supported using (:children) keyword: [YOUR_NEW_GROUP_OF_GROUPS:children]

#This is a example of a host configuration file. You can use # to include your comments on hosts file

foo_server.example.com
192.168.6.1
bar_server.example.com

[my_webservers_group]
foo5.example.com
bar6.example.com

[my_dbservers_group]
onedb1.example.com
twodb.example.com

#Example of a server alias on standard Ansible port
my_local_defined_hostname ansible_host=192.0.2.50

#Example of a server alias on a non standard Ansible port

my_jumper_server_alias ansible_host=192.0.2.50 ansible_port=5555 

You can also read Ansible best practices

Basic operations with your inventory:

• List managed hosts:

ansible all --list-hosts

ansible YOUR_GROUP --list-hosts

ansible-inventory --graph

ansible-inventory --list

To filter just one group of host: ansible-inventory --list | jq '.["YOUR_GROUP_NAME"]'

• List defined groups

ansible localhost -m debug -a 'var=groups.keys()'

ansible localhost -m debug -a 'var=groups'

Activities

• Read about Ansible dynamic inventory https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/intro_dynamic_inventory.html

See also

• Ansible: modules, plugins, Playbooks (examples) ansible-playbook, ansible-vault, ansible-inventory, ansible-config, Ansible Tower, Ansible Galaxy (Roles) (ansible-galaxy), ansible-cmdb, gather facts, ansible.cfg, Ansible Molecule, Ansible collections, register, template, --ask-pass, --ask-become-pass, remote_user:, /etc/ansible/hosts, ansible-doc, ansible-lint, .ansible/, --forks, --start-at-task, changelog, inventory, Notify:, ansible HOSTNAME -m ping, gathering, /usr/bin/ansible, ansible -m ping, ansible.builtin, hosts: (Ansible), set fact:, when:, blockinfile:, become method:, include:, git:, AWX, ansible --help, Tags, Ansible variables, versions

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-manage-multistage-environments-with-ansible

http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_best_practices.html