vmware_vm_inventory and workflow templates

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1

Hi Ansible group,

I am working on constructing a workflow Template using Ansible Tower 3.8.3 with Ansible ver. 2.9.27. The workflow Template consists of just two job Templates, each one with code residing in separate repos. I created an Inventory in Ansible Tower with a Source “InventorySource - VMware deployments” that contains the vmware_vm_inventory plugin under Source Variables.

2

Are you trying to get a real-time inventory or are you scheduling an inventory update in ansible tower?

Walter

3

Hi Walter,

I am trying to get a real-time inventory based off of job Template 1 (jT1). I added a filter to the plug-in to filter for the config.name. I “think” ideally I’d like to filter based on a tag, i.e. those instance(s) with tag would be put into the specified Inventory. Job Template 2 (jT2) would then execute using the tagged inventory. That make sense?

The documentation for the vmware inventory filtering is quite poor so I am not sure, yet, on how to filter for tags.

In a separate directory I do have an ansible.cfg with the enable_plugins parameter and the vmware_vm_inventory.yml. I can grab a list of the inventory by running …
“$ ansible-inventory -i vmware_vm_inventory.yml --list”

The goal is to create vms from a template and hence new inventory then shuttle this inventory over to jT2 for any additional post-processing.

Hope this helps!

4

So … the vmware_vm_inventory … I sense from the documentation that this builds an inventory that is only valid for the context of the running playbook. You cannot pass that inventory downstream in a workflow to another playbook. You could create a list of hostnames as an artifact using set_stats in JT1. In JT2 craft a simple first play that runs on hosts: localhost and builds an inventory group using addhost, and then reference that inventory group in “hosts: my_group” in play number 2 in the JT2. use that same variable in the hosts argument.

JT1:

  • name: create my_hosts list artifact for downstream jobs templates
    set_stats:
    data:
    my_hosts: “{{ list of hostnames from vmware_vm_inventory plugin }}”

JT2:

  • name: build dynamic inventory host group from upstream artifact my_hosts list
    hosts: localhost
    tasks:

  • name: add {{ item | lower }}
    add_host:
    name: “{{ vm_guest_name | lower }}”
    group: my_hosts_group
    loop: “{{ my_hosts }}”

  • name: execute tasks against dynamic inventory group my_hosts_group
    hosts: my_hosts_group
    tasks:

  • name: task1 for vm_group inventory
    some_module:

  • name: taskN for vm_group inventory

some_module:

See if this gets you going …

Walter