Ansible deployment script, variable hosts value

[Rob Wilkerson]

I'm tipping my toe in the Ansible pool via a simple project deployment script. I have 3 environments (the usual dev, staging, production) and the deployment is exactly the same for each. In every example I've seen so far, the `hosts` are hard coded in the playbook. What I'd like to do is create a single `deploy.yml` file and specify the `hosts` value when I call it. Otherwise, at least in my limited understanding so far, we'll have to either modify the playbook every time we want to run a deployment against one of our environments.

I've seen something like this:

$ ansible deploy.yml -e "hosts=development"

where, in `deploy.yml`, we have `hosts: $hosts`, but that feels ham-fisted.

Is this the recommended/best approach? Should I be structuring things differently?

[J Hawkesworth]

The value for hosts in the playbook can be a group of hosts (defined in your inventory).

I'd suggest setting up different inventory files for each environment then you can run

ansible-playbook -i /etc/ansible/dev-inventory deploy.yml

or

ansible-playbook -i /etc/ansible/staging-inventory deploy.yml

Jon

[Rob Wilkerson]

Okay, that makes sense. In that scenario, I assume that deploy.yml just specifies hosts: all which would pick up everything in that inventory file, right?

Thanks!

[Dan Poirier]

Or when things get more complicated, you can define groups like "webservers" and have playbooks apply to the relevant group.

[Alex Leonhardt]

Are you using AWS or any other cloud provider ? I'd suggest using dynamic inventory then instead as it'll be a pain later to keep updating names / IPs / etc. etc. 

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_dynamic_inventory.html

Alex

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