# Interfacing ansible with an outside inventory program.

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/interfacing-ansible-with-an-outside-inventory-program/14656>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [February 25, 2014, 10:44pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/interfacing-ansible-with-an-outside-inventory-program/14656 "2014-02-25T22:44:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Stephen\_John\_Smoogen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ad7895/32.png) [@Stephen\_John\_Smoogen](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Stephen_John_Smoogen)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2014, 10:44pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/interfacing-ansible-with-an-outside-inventory-program/14656/1 "2014-02-25T22:44:01Z")

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So I am trying to keep track of a couple of projects assets which is some information that ansible can get but other stuff like rack, warranty, cyclades and cisco port hookups and such are extra info that works better in a web form (say glpi or racktables etc). Has anyone worked in getting ansible to work with these sorts of programs (and am I missing something so blindingly obvious that I should have used that first :)).

Thanks

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**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan1)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2014, 10:49pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/interfacing-ansible-with-an-outside-inventory-program/14656/2 "2014-02-25T22:49:04Z")

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Like trying to get ansible to manage over cyclades?

I am interested in seeing what this may look like, though as it’s a serial console not entirely sure how file transfer would work given Ansible’s module architecture.

Might not be compatible.

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**Author:** ![Stephen\_John\_Smoogen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ad7895/32.png) [@Stephen\_John\_Smoogen](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Stephen_John_Smoogen)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2014, 11:05pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/interfacing-ansible-with-an-outside-inventory-program/14656/3 "2014-02-25T23:05:34Z")

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> Like trying to get ansible to manage over cyclades?
> 
> I am interested in seeing what this may look like, though as it's a serial  
> console not entirely sure how file transfer would work given Ansible's  
> module architecture.
> 
> Might not be compatible.

No sorry even more mundane. So I have a box which has a lot of information  
that can be gotten via ansible and its tools (serial number, drives, etc),  
but there is a lot of information that administrators need which is not  
system level like which port on the cyclades the wire should go to, which  
port on the cisco the eth0 is on and which one ethN is plugged into, when  
the warranty runs out, how much the box cost.

These sorts of details are usually tracked in the following manner in  
sophistication.  
notes of paper  
text file  
spreadsheet  
real-world inventory control program  
all-in-one monitoring, inventory, configuration management program

for 2,3,4 some configuration management systems will be able to output say  
a csv of the inventory it knows which can be connected with data that is  
entered in by hand. For some of the real-world inventory control program  
they may even have agents which you install that gathers that info for you  
(which seems to be a waste when ansible or facter can do it for you.) So I  
was wondering if someone had already looked at interfacing these sorts of  
things and I would use that. If not then I will see which of the web  
programs is more amenable to getting data and then working on getting  
ansible to collect the information and out put in a way that GLPI ,  
Racktables, whatever could pull in without running a continual agent on the  
clients.

However my next email was if anyone was managing their cyclades via ansible  
since it has ssh and text config files... but I am sure I would want to  
test that first on one I could get my hands on versus trying it at our  
remote colocation :). If not I will see about getting one here and working  
on getting the two to talk as having our configs set up that way would make  
my hand editing files at 2am a lot nicer.