What is dynamic inventory in Ansible

Question

Hi Guys,

I am new to Ansible. I don't know too much about inventory file. Can anyone tell me what is dynamic inventory?

Answer 1

Hi@akhtar,

In a configuration especially a cloud setup such as AWS where the inventory file keeps constantly changing as you add or decommission servers, keeping tabs on the hosts defined in the inventory file becomes a real challenge. It becomes inconvenient going back to the host file and updating the list of hosts with their IP addresses.

And this is where a dynamic inventory comes to play. A dynamic inventory is a script written in Python, PHP, or any other programming language. It comes in handy in cloud environments such as AWS where IP addresses change once a virtual server is stopped and started again.

Ansible already has developed inventory scripts for public cloud platforms such as Google Compute Engine, Amazon EC2 instance, OpenStack, RackSpace, cobbler, among others.