# Azure inventory: Hosts vs Cloud Services

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/azure-inventory-hosts-vs-cloud-services/16010>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Tags:** azure\
**Created:** [August 22, 2014, 10:45am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/azure-inventory-hosts-vs-cloud-services/16010 "2014-08-22T10:45:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Trond\_Hindenes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/96bed5/32.png) [@Trond\_Hindenes](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Trond_Hindenes)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2014, 10:45am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/azure-inventory-hosts-vs-cloud-services/16010/1 "2014-08-22T10:45:45Z")

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I just tested the Azure Inventory (thru Ansible Tower 2.0, but I guess the inventory script itself comes from Ansible core)

I noticed that Ansible lists each cloud service as a “host”.In azure speak, a cloud service is simply a vip, and a cloud service can thus contain multiple VM instances. This is a problem when the various hosts inside a cloud service need unique settings, such as different ssh/winrm ports or whatever.

A more logical approach would be to list the actual VM instances as hosts, but to use some grouping logic to enable targeting of vm instances inside a specific cloud service.

I thought I’d file an issue on this, but I want to be sure that this actually comes from Ansible core and is not specific to ansible Tower before I do so.