Running Ansible playbook without an inventory file (use other source for getting inventory)

[Arpit Ghiya]

Hello

We are currently in a process to switch from our current legacy systems to Ansible for server provisioning and deployment. All of our server details are stored in ruby configuration files [.rb], which is obviously our server inventory right now.

Now, we are planning to use the same config files as input to ansible-playbook for deployment. I can write a script which will read my ruby file and create a ansible style inventory file on the run time. Now, it is possible for Ansible to read the inventory dynamically after the execution starts?

Eg:

Step 1: Call Ansible-Playbook (with a variable to define my environment; eg: qa/uat etc)

Step 2; I call my custom script which in turn reads ruby config file for that particular environment and generates the Ansible inventory

Step 3: Ansible now reads the inventory and proceeds with the remaining tasks from the playbook.

P.S. The reason we are a bit reserved about creating inventory in Ansible on the first place is because we don't want redundant information. The ruby config files act as a Golden Source for server details for many other systems as well. If we replicate them in Ansible inventory - we will end up managing them at two places.

[Andrea Tartaglia]

Hi, 

I think instead writing a script that then writes an inventory file, just write a dynamic inventory and pass that as inventory file to ansible. I believe it will make your life easier in the long run. 

—

A.

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[jta...@ansible.com]

You could accomplish this with script+add_host

1) local_action script <inventoryscript> + register: output

2) add_host: {{ item }} with_items: output.stdout

[Benjamin Redling]

On 07/01/2016 08:50, Arpit Ghiya wrote:

> We are currently in a process to switch from our current legacy systems to
> Ansible for server provisioning and deployment. All of our server details
> are stored in ruby configuration files [.rb], which is obviously our server
> inventory right now.
>
> Now, we are planning to use the same config files as input to
> ansible-playbook for deployment. I can write a script which will read my
> ruby file and create a ansible style inventory file on the run time. Now,
> it is possible for Ansible to read the inventory dynamically after the
> execution starts?

[...]

http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_dynamic_inventory.html
http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/developing_inventory.html

BR