# Managing complex inventory

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/managing-complex-inventory/14651>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [February 25, 2014, 3:31pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/managing-complex-inventory/14651 "2014-02-25T15:31:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![tom.usher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f475e1/32.png) [@tom.usher](https://forum.ansible.com/u/tom.usher)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2014, 3:31pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/managing-complex-inventory/14651/1 "2014-02-25T15:31:40Z")

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I’m managing multiple separate applications from my Ansible repo, each with a different set of servers. Each application has multiple instances (dev, stage, prod).  
To manage all this I have a whole bunch of inventory files:

- app1
- app1\_variant1
- dev
- stage
- prod- app1\_variant2
- dev
- stage
- prod- app2
- dev
- stage
- prod- etc.  
(that’s 9 separate inventory files for those 2 apps).

Is there a better way to manage this? How does everyone else deal with lots of applications with different sets of servers?

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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, 10:20pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/managing-complex-inventory/14651/2 "2014-02-25T22:20:25Z")

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Basically you don’t need different inventory files if you don’t want them to be.

More than likely, you’ll just want to seperate dev/stage/prod and have groups for the apps.