What is an Ansible Inventory and what are the different types?

Ansible Inventory defines the hosts and groups that Ansible manages. It specifies which machines your playbooks will run against.

Static Inventory (INI format):

[webservers]
web1.example.com
web2.example.com

[databases]
db1.example.com ansible_host=192.168.1.100

[production:children]
webservers
databases

Static Inventory (YAML format):

all:
  children:
    webservers:
      hosts:
        web1.example.com:
        web2.example.com:
    databases:
      hosts:
        db1.example.com:
          ansible_host: 192.168.1.100

Dynamic Inventory:

• Scripts that generate inventory from external sources (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Returns JSON format with host and group information
• Useful for cloud environments where hosts change frequently
• Can be written in any language that outputs proper JSON