# Auditing and Reporting on Hosts

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/auditing-and-reporting-on-hosts/20729>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [March 1, 2016, 6:51pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/auditing-and-reporting-on-hosts/20729 "2016-03-01T18:51:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![John\_Leo\_Huetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6f9a4e/32.png) [@John\_Leo\_Huetter](https://forum.ansible.com/u/John_Leo_Huetter)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 6:51pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/auditing-and-reporting-on-hosts/20729/1 "2016-03-01T18:51:20Z")

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Hello, is there an effort to enhance Ansible to collect and synthesize auditing and reporting of remote hosts?

I would like to see that all my remote hosts have the same files.

We have a standby site and before we fail over to it, would like to do a quick “sanity” check that the files are 100% alike.

Do not want to scramble and apply patches in “dry run” mode as a way do this.

Could also check rpm inventory.

Perhaps a module called compare\_systems?

Rsync is too clunky especially if you have like 10 hosts, you have to iterate them all against one host.

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**Author:** ![Brian\_Coca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@Brian\_Coca](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brian_Coca)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 7:11pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/auditing-and-reporting-on-hosts/20729/2 "2016-03-01T19:11:08Z")

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tower already implements a lot of this (disclaimer, they pay my bills).

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**Author:** ![John\_Leo\_Huetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6f9a4e/32.png) [@John\_Leo\_Huetter](https://forum.ansible.com/u/John_Leo_Huetter)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 9:06pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/auditing-and-reporting-on-hosts/20729/3 "2016-03-01T21:06:00Z")

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Thanks for the quick reply. However we want something quick and dirty we can implement as a playbook from the command line using an “audit” type module.  
Something like: compare\_filesystems.

Running from server A, does the /app directory across server B,C,D,E all match file checksums/perms/ownership?

I don’t want the requirement that something be deployed under the auspices of Ansible Tower in order to produce these results.

Ansible Tower would be considered AFTER we see the command line stuff meets our needs 🙂

John