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Ansible: Zero to Production Ready

AWS - Create a Dynamic Inventory

Explore how to create a dynamic AWS inventory in Ansible with the aws_ec2 plugin. Understand querying EC2 instances, configuring groups with Jinja2 conditions, and running playbooks for scalable infrastructure management.

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Ansible has a built-in inventory plugin for AWS called aws_ec2. The plugin queries AWS for EC2 instance details and constructs an Ansible inventory from that information. The inventory’s hosts are populated by the EC2 instances that are returned. Group and group memberships are determined by the host variables that are assigned to each host.

We ceate a file named hosts_aws_ec2.yml and define the aws_ec2 settings.

YAML
plugin: aws_ec2
regions:
  - us-east-1
filters:
  tag:app: ansible

Let’s break down the file.

  • plugin: Define the inventory plugin, aws_ec2.

  • regions: List all the regions for the inventory. All EC2 instances within the listed regions will then be added to the inventory.

  • filter: tag:app limit the inventory to only EC2 instances that match the tag specified, ansible. Without this, it would ...