Ansible

Inventory Commands

Define and manage host inventories in INI, YAML, or dynamic formats. Group hosts, set variables, and integrate with cloud providers.

6 commands

Pro Tips

Use dynamic inventory scripts for cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure).

Use 'ansible-inventory --graph' to visualize host group relationships.

Set group_vars and host_vars in dedicated directories for organization.

Common Mistakes

Avoid hardcoding IPs - use hostnames or dynamic inventory for flexibility.

Inventory plugins have replaced legacy dynamic inventory scripts.

Commands

Use Custom Inventory

$ ansible all -i inventory.yml -m ping

Specify a custom inventory file

Show Inventory Graph

$ ansible-inventory --graph

Display inventory hierarchy

Show Host Variables

$ ansible-inventory --host <hostname>

Display variables for a specific host

List Inventory

$ ansible-inventory --list

Display full inventory in JSON

Validate Inventory

$ ansible-inventory -i inventory.yml --list

Validate inventory file syntax

Export to YAML

$ ansible-inventory --list --yaml > inventory.yml

Export inventory to YAML format