Ansible/Vagrant/Static Inventory

Main article: Ansible/Vagrant

This page covers how to manage a static inventory file (a.k.a., hosts file, Ansible/Hosts) for Ansible, maintained by hand, if you are using Ansible with Vagrant (Ansible/Vagrant).

Static vs dynamic inventory

Ansible/Vagrant/Static Inventory - static inventory requires the hosts file (containing the list of machines that Ansible is managing) be kept up to date by hand. This can be a burden if details are changing or if things are allocated automatically.

Ansible/Vagrant/Dynamic Inventory - dynamic inventory uses something like an API or a database to obtain information about the machines that Ansible is managing. This makes scaling and generalization much easier.

Managing a static inventory file using Vagrant boxes

Edit playbooks/hosts and include details about each vagrant host.

Use the command vagrant ssh-config to get these details.

Example:

$ cat playbooks/hosts

myvagrantbox ansible_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_port=2222 ansible_user=vagrant ansible_private_key_file=.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key

Your vagrant boxes should be up and running with the vagrant up command.