Ansible Concepts

Internal

• Ansible

Inventory File

Ansible works against multiple systems at the same time. It does this by selecting portions of systems listed in Ansible’s inventory file. The default location of the inventory file is /etc/ansible/hosts.

A different location of the inventory file can be specified on the command line with:

-i <path>

Inventory File Structure

host1.example.com

[webservers]
web1.example.com
web2.example.com

[dbservers]
db1.example.com
db2.example.com

Groups

The headings in brackets are group names, which are used in classifying systems and deciding what systems you are controlling at what times and for what purpose. A host can be part of more than one group.

Default Groups

There are two default groups: "all" and "ungrouped". "all" contains every host. ungrouped contains all hosts that don’t have another group aside from all.

Recursive Groups

Recursive groups are declared with the [<group-name>:children].

[A]
host1
host2

[B]
host3
host4

[AandB:children]
A
B

[AandB:vars]
something=something-else

Group Variables

Group variables are declared with [<group-name>:vars]. If they are declared this way, the variables apply to an entire group at once.

[group-A]
host1
host2

[group-A:vars]
something=something-else