My Ansible AWS EC2 Dynamic Inventory

Start with the the Ansible configuration. This can be set in /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg or ~/.ansible.cfg (in the home directory) or ansible.cfg (in the current directory)

My suggestion is use one of the first 2 (ie. /etc/ or ~/.ansible.cfg if you’re going to be managing instances from your machine. Update the configuration as needed.

[defaults]
inventory = ./ansible_plugins
enable_plugins = aws_ec2
host_key_checking = False
pipelining = True
log_path = /var/log/ansible

You may need other plugins, this one is for aws_ec2. In the /etc/ansible/ansible_plugins directory, create the *_aws_ec2.yml configuration file for your inventory

# /etc/ansible/ansible_plugins/testing_aws_ec2.yml
---
plugin: aws_ec2
aws_profile: testing
regions:
  - us-east-1
  - us-east-2
filters:
  tag:Team: testing
  instance-state-name : running
hostnames:
  - instance-id
  - dns-name
keyed_groups:
  - prefix: team
    key: tags['Team']

You'll notice, I’m filtering using a tag:Team == testing and showing only running instances.

I’m also using the instance-id and dns-name attributes as hostname

And I’m using the tag['Team'] as a grouping.

So now, I can do the following from any directory (since my configuration is global in /etc/ansible)

$ ansible-inventory --list --yaml
all:
  children:
    aws_ec2:
      hosts:
        i-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
          ami_launch_index: 0
          architecture: x86_64
          block_device_mappings:
          - device_name: /dev/sda1
            ebs:
              attach_time: 2020-08-10 15:20:58+00:00
              delete_on_termination: true
              status: attached
              volume_id: vol-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
...
    team_testing:
      hosts:
        i-xyxyxyxyxyyxyxyy: {}
        i-xyxyxy2321yxyxyy: {}
        i-xyxyxyxyxy89yxyy: {}
        i-xyxy1210xyyxyxyy: {}
        i-xyxy999999yxyxyy: {}
        i-xyxyxy44xyyxyxyy: {}
        i-xyx2323yxyyxyxyy: {}
        i-xyxyxyxyxy9977yy: {}
    ungrouped: {}

I can also use the team_testing or the individual instance_id in my Ansible hosts calls.

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My Ansible AWS EC2 Dynamic Inventory

Abdallah Deeb

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