ansible-inventory-yaml-groups

Alternative YAML formatted inventory for Ansible. This allows you to to assign groups to hosts as well as hosts to groups, and easily make new groups that are supersets and subsets of other groups.

NOTE: Ansible supports it's own YAML formatted inventory, see: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/examples/hosts.yaml

Installation

If you are using Ansible 2.4 or later you can use the inventory plugin version, otherwise you must use the dynamic inventory version.

Inventory Plugin (2.4+)

Add the following to ansible.cfg:

[defaults]
inventory = hosts.yml
inventory_plugins = /path/to/ansible-inventory-yaml-groups/inventory_plugins

[inventory]
enable_plugins = host_list, script, yaml_groups, ini

Dynamic Inventory (Any)

In ansible.cfg, set inventory to yaml_groups.py. Addthe following to ansible.cfg:

[defaults]
inventory = /path/to/ansible-inventory-yaml-groups/yaml_groups.py

You can control the name of the hosts.yml file by setting ANSIBLE_HOSTS_YML.

Format of hosts.yml

The YAML file is divided into two sections, groups and hosts.

Groups (optional)

Entries in groups are optional, but they allow the creation groups by listing it's hosts, and/or vars as in the standard Ansible inventory file. Hosts listed in hosts will be created even if there is no corresponding entry in the hosts section.

You can also provide a list of groups to include all hosts from, a list of groups to require that each host belong to, and a list of groups to exclude that each host must not belong to. The order in which these groups are updated is undefined. You can use the implicit all group here, which is only useful for include.

Hosts (optional)

Each host in the hosts section can have a list of groups that it will be a member of, and host varibles defined in vars. Groups will be created even if there is no corresponding group in the groups section.

Example: hosts.yml

---
groups:
  app1-prod:
    include:
      - app1
    require:
      - prod

  app1-dev:
    include:
      - app1
    require:
      - prod

  app2-prod:
    hosts:
      - app2-web1

  app2:
    include:
      - app2-prod
      - app2-dev

  all-apps:
    include:
      - app1
      - app2

hosts:
  web-app1-prod.location1.com:
    groups:
      - app1
      - location1
      - prod
      - web

  db-app1-prod.location1.com:
    groups:
      - app1
      - location1
      - prod
      - db

  app1-dev.location1.com:
    vars:
      EXAMPLE: "true"
    groups:
      - app1
      - location2
      - dev
      - web
      - db

See Also

• https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/examples/hosts.yaml
• https://github.com/jtyr/ansible-yaml_inventory