# Common inventory for multiple separate projects/environments? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Created:** [November 6, 2015, 11:48am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/common-inventory-for-multiple-separate-projects-environments/19703 "2015-11-06T11:48:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lupu\_Pitkanen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Lupu\_Pitkanen](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Lupu_Pitkanen)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 11:48am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/common-inventory-for-multiple-separate-projects-environments/19703/1 "2015-11-06T11:48:48Z")
Hi, I’m responsible for dozens of separate projects or server environments (each containing multiple hosts) and now planning to manage all of them using ansible. There’s a requirement to have a separate git repository for each environment configuration containing inventory, variables, vault, roles and playbooks belonging to that environment only. The issue is that I need to have a combined inventory of all hosts from all environments so that I could for example run “ansible all …” command for every single host I manage. I’m aware of the group feature of the inventory, but I can’t see how I could keep the configuration separated that way. ├── env1 │ │ ├── group\_vars │ │ │ └── … │ │ │ │ │ ├── roles │ │ │ └── … │ │ │ │ │ ├── CHANGELOG.md │ │ ├── README.md │ │ ├── hosts │ │ └── site.yml │ │ ├── env2 │ │ ├── group\_vars │ │ │ └── … │ │ │ │ │ ├── roles │ │ │ └── … │ │ │ │ │ ├── CHANGELOG.md │ │ ├── README.md │ │ ├── hosts │ │ └── site.yml │ │ … Is this kind of layout feasible? I couldn’t find any examples for a scenario like this and would appreciate any best practices for this kind of setup. Thank you. Best Regards, Lupu ---
**Author:** ![notification](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/aca169/32.png) [@notification](https://forum.ansible.com/u/notification)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 11:35pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/common-inventory-for-multiple-separate-projects-environments/19703/2 "2015-11-06T23:35:52Z")
Perhaps this article will help you: [http://rosstuck.com/multistage-environments-with-ansible/](http://rosstuck.com/multistage-environments-with-ansible/) ---
**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:** [November 9, 2015, 4:56pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/common-inventory-for-multiple-separate-projects-environments/19703/3 "2015-11-09T16:56:44Z")
one thing about the article, its using group vars are PLAY level, not at inventory level, which can cause confusion, specially if you move the plays to a subdirectory. ---
**Author:** ![Lupu\_Pitkanen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Lupu\_Pitkanen](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Lupu_Pitkanen)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 8:19pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/common-inventory-for-multiple-separate-projects-environments/19703/4 "2015-11-10T20:19:04Z")
Thanks very much for pointing out that article and for the clarification regarding group\_vars. But I can’t see how I could have a separate dir (and git repo) for each group of hosts? Inventories, group\_vars and playbooks seem to be under the same directory structure. Maybe this is not possible and I need to think other ways to handle all of the hosts at the same time, maybe with a separate (duplicated) inventory or so. ---
**Author:** ![Jeff1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/4af34b/32.png) [@Jeff1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Jeff1)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 11:49am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/common-inventory-for-multiple-separate-projects-environments/19703/5 "2015-11-11T11:49:06Z")
ditto - great pointers for an Ansible newbie like me - @marco, @brian - thanks and kudos