Inventory file

• In a inventory file

hostName

; With regexp, you can add a lot of hosts
www[01:50].example.com
db-[a:f].example.com

playbook

• as playbook variable. Example

- name: Wait 300 seconds for port 22 to become open and contain "OpenSSH"
  wait_for:
    port: 22
    host: '{{ (ansible_ssh_host|default(ansible_host))|default(inventory_hostname) }}'
    search_regex: OpenSSH
    delay: 10
  connection: local

Inventory Variable

Example:

• Inventory INI file. Variables for the host1 and host2

host1 http_port=80 maxRequestsPerChild=808
host2 http_port=303 maxRequestsPerChild=909

Variable file (host_vars directory)

Variables for a host may be defined in one file or in multiple file under a directory.

The location of this file is relative to the inventory file path or playbook file path.

Order of precedence if both paths exist:

• playbook directory (higher priority - chosen first )
• inventory directory

Syntax:

($INVENTORY_DIR|$PLAYBOOK_DIR)/host_vars/host1.yml # can optionally end in '.yaml', or '.json' or no file extension
# or in a directory structure
($INVENTORY_DIR|$PLAYBOOK_DIR)/host_vars/host1/db_settings.yml
($INVENTORY_DIR|$PLAYBOOK_DIR)/host_vars/host1/cluster_settings

Example with the default inventory location: /etc/ansible/hosts, the structure would be

/etc/ansible/group_vars/host1.yml
# or in a directory structure
/etc/ansible/group_vars/host1/db_settings.yml
/etc/ansible/group_vars/host1/cluster_settings

with the file

---
ntp_server: acme.example.org
database_server: storage.example.org

Inventory

• inventory_hostname is the name of the hostname as configured in Ansible’s inventory host file
• inventory_hostname_short - the part up to the first period, without the rest of the domain.

[group]
inventory_hostname blablabla

Connection

Connection:

• ansible_host : the name to connect to

Fact

Fact

• ansible_hostname : the hostname discovered
• ansible_fqdn - Network - Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)

You can see them by running the setup module with the ansible command line

ansible -i inventories.yml -m setup all