Inventory plugins¶
Inventory plugins offer an alternative to the more often used static inventory files.
The following is a simple, but complete, example of using the inventory plugin:
$ cat > inventory.ec2.yml <<EOF
---
plugin: steampunk.aws.ec2
groups:
stopped_instances_in_my_vpc:
filters:
instance-state-name: stopped
vpc-id: vpc-1232ef
EOF
$ cat > delete-stopped-vms.yml <<EOF
- hosts: stopped_instances_in_my_vpc
gather_facts: false
tasks:
- steampunk.aws.ec2_instance:
id: "{{ id }}"
state: absent
delegate_to: localhost
EOF
$ export ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_ENABLED=steampunk.aws.ec2
$ AWS_PROFILE=my-dev-profile ansible-playbook -i inventory.ec2.yml delete-stopped-vms.yml
The inventory file above (inventory.ec2.yml) filters hosts in a specific VPC in the stopped state.
Per Ansible conventions, it must be named *.ec2.{yml,yaml} to be parsed as a valid inventory
file, and it must also contain the plugin: steampunk.aws.ec2 directive.
After enabling the inventory plugin by exporting an environment variable, we can run a playbook
that takes the filtered-i.e. stopped-hosts and removes them from AWS.