Introduction

This guide shows you the best way to list all the virtual machines within your VMware infrastructure using Ansible. I’ll provide a live Playbook and some simple Ansible code. Welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot—I’m Luca Berton.

Ansible Dynamic Inventory for VMware

  • Functionality: Dynamically retrieves virtual machines as inventory hosts from the VMware environment.
  • Plugin: community.vmware.vmware_vm_inventory
  • Dependencies: Python pyVmomi, requests, and vSphere Automation SDK

The VMware dynamic inventory plugin interacts with VMware APIs to dynamically manage nodes with Ansible. The community.vmware.vmware_vm_inventory plugin, part of the community-supported collection, allows you to run Ansible automation across your VMware virtual machines.

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Demo

Let’s configure Ansible Dynamic Inventory for VMware to list all virtual machines in your VMware infrastructure as an Ansible inventory.

Configuration Files

  • ansible.cfg:

    [inventory]
enable_plugins = vmware_vm_inventory

  • inventory.vmware.yml:

    plugin: vmware_vm_inventory
strict: False
hostname: vmware.example.com
username: [email protected]
password: MySecretPassword123
validate_certs: False
with_tags: False
groups:
  VMs: True

Listing Hosts

  • Command:
    $ ansible-inventory -i inventory.vmware.yml --list
  • Output:
    {
    "VMs": {
        "hosts": [
          "myvm_42254893-3793-0e4f-9f61-7c37d244c2a8"
       ]
    },
    "_meta": {
        "hostvars": {
           "myvm_42254893-3793-0e4f-9f61-7c37d244c2a8": {
                "config": {
                    ...
                },
                ...
            }
        }
    },
    "all": {
        "children": [
            "VMs",
            ...
       ]
    },
    ...
}

Graphing Hosts

  • Command:
    $ ansible-inventory -i inventory.vmware.yml --graph
  • Output:
    @all:
  |--@VMs:
  |  |--myvm_42254893-3793-0e4f-9f61-7c37d244c2a8
  |--@centos64Guest:
  |  |--myvm_42254893-3793-0e4f-9f61-7c37d244c2a8
  |--@poweredOff:
  |  |--myvm_42254893-3793-0e4f-9f61-7c37d244c2a8

Code with ❤️ on GitHub

Conclusion

Now you know how to configure Ansible Dynamic Inventory for VMware, enabling you to automate and manage your VMware virtual machines efficiently.

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