The Ansible Inventory

Ansible maintains a central configuration file, which is used to identify and maintain the infrastructure identifications. This inventory file allows the Ansible administrator/ playbook to easily list, group, and target infrastructure items during execution. The default Ansible inventory file created (upon installation of Ansible) is /etc/ansible/hosts. Inside it are a few examples of basic inventory grouping structures and organizational categories for infrastructure.

In general, the Ansible inventory file can be leveraged to organize hosts in a couple of specific ways: as a set of defined groups, or as a set of defined infrastructure pieces (loosely defined and not in a specific group). The inventory file can leverage either of the previously described methods or a combination of the two. Let's look in greater detail on how these two inventory organization systems operate.

Defined inventory groups

Ansible provides a robust and feature-rich mechanism for managing the...