azure.azcollection.azure_rm inventory – Azure Resource Manager inventory plugin
Note
This inventory plugin is part of the azure.azcollection collection (version 3.0.0).
You might already have this collection installed if you are using the ansible package.
It is not included in ansible-core.
To check whether it is installed, run ansible-galaxy collection list.
To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install azure.azcollection.
You need further requirements to be able to use this inventory plugin,
see Requirements for details.
To use it in a playbook, specify: azure.azcollection.azure_rm.
Synopsis
Query VM details from Azure Resource Manager
Requires a YAML configuration file whose name ends with ‘azure_rm.(yml|yaml)’
By default, sets
ansible_hostto the first public IP address found (preferring the primary NIC). If no public IPs are found, the first private IP (also preferring the primary NIC). The default may be overridden viahostvar_expressions; see examples.
Requirements
The below requirements are needed on the local controller node that executes this inventory.
python >= 2.7
The host that executes this module must have the azure.azcollection collection installed via galaxy
All python packages listed in collection’s requirements.txt must be installed via pip on the host that executes modules from azure.azcollection
Full installation instructions may be found https://galaxy.ansible.com/azure/azcollection
Parameters
Parameter |
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Active Directory username. Use when authenticating with an Active Directory user rather than service principal. |
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Azure AD authority url. Use when authenticating with Username/password, and has your own ADFS authority. |
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Selects an API profile to use when communicating with Azure services. Default value of Default: |
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Controls the source of the credentials to use for authentication. Can also be set via the When set to When set to When set to When set to When set to The Choices:
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To improve performance, results are fetched using an unsupported batch API. Disabling Default: |
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Controls the certificate validation behavior for Azure endpoints. By default, all modules will validate the server certificate, but when an HTTPS proxy is in use, or against Azure Stack, it may be necessary to disable this behavior by passing Choices:
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Azure client ID. Use when authenticating with a Service Principal or Managed Identity (msi). Can also be set via the |
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For cloud environments other than the US public cloud, the environment name (as defined by Azure Python SDK, eg, Default: |
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Create vars from jinja2 expressions. Default: |
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A mapping of group names to Jinja2 expressions. When the mapped expression is true, the host is added to the named group. |
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A default set of filters that is applied in addition to the conditions in Default: |
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Determines whether or not instance discovery is performed when attempting to authenticate. Setting this to true will completely disable both instance discovery and authority validation. This functionality is intended for use in scenarios where the metadata endpoint cannot be reached such as in private clouds or Azure Stack. The process of instance discovery entails retrieving authority metadata from https://login.microsoft.com/ to validate the authority. By setting this to **True**, the validation of the authority is disabled. As a result, it is crucial to ensure that the configured authority host is valid and trustworthy. Set via credential file profile or the Choices:
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Excludes hosts from the inventory with a list of Jinja2 conditional expressions. Each expression in the list is evaluated for each host; when the expression is true, the host is excluded from the inventory. Default: |
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When false, template failures during group and filter processing are silently ignored (eg, if a filter or group expression refers to an undefined host variable) Choices:
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Add hosts to group based on Jinja2 conditionals. Default: |
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A list of Jinja2 expressions in order of precedence to compose inventory_hostname. Ignores expression if result is an empty string or None value. By default, inventory_hostname is generated to be globally unique based on the VM host name. See An expression of Use Default: |
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A mapping of hostvar names to Jinja2 expressions. The value for each host is the result of the Jinja2 expression (which may refer to any of the host’s existing variables at the time this inventory plugin runs). |
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A list of resource group names to search for Azure StackHCI virtual machines. ‘\*’ will include all resource groups in the subscription. Default: |
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Include hosts from the inventory with a list of Jinja2 conditional expressions. Each expression in the list is evaluated for each host; when the expression is true, the host is included in the inventory, all hosts are includes in the inventory by default. Default: |
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A list of resource group names to search for virtual machines. ‘\*’ will include all resource groups in the subscription. Can also be set comma separated resource group names via the Default: |
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A list of resource group names to search for virtual machine scale sets (VMSSs). ‘\*’ will include all resource groups in the subscription. Default: |
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Creates groups based on the value of a host variable. Requires a list of dictionaries, defining Default: |
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The default value when the host variable’s value is an empty string. This option is mutually exclusive with |
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The key from input dictionary used to generate groups. |
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parent group for keyed group. |
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A keyed group name will start with this prefix. Default: |
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separator used to build the keyed group name. Default: |
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Set this option to This option is mutually exclusive with Choices:
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Use in conjunction with By default, a keyed group that does not have a prefix or a separator provided will have a name that starts with an underscore. This is because the default prefix is Set this option to If the group name is derived from a mapping the separator is still used to concatenate the items. To not use a separator in the group name at all, set the separator for the keyed group to an empty string instead. Choices:
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Parent argument. |
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Parent argument. |
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Active Directory user password. Use when authenticating with an Active Directory user rather than service principal. |
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By default this plugin will use globally unique host names. This option allows you to override that, and use the name that matches the old inventory script naming. This is not the default, as these names are not truly unique, and can conflict with other hosts. The default behavior will add extra hashing to the end of the hostname to prevent such conflicts. Choices:
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marks this as an instance of the ‘azure_rm’ plugin Choices:
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Security profile found in ~/.azure/credentials file. |
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Azure client secret. Use when authenticating with a Service Principal. |
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If Since it is possible to use facts in the expressions they might not always be available and we ignore those errors by default. Choices:
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Your Azure subscription Id. |
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Azure tenant ID. Use when authenticating with a Service Principal. |
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The thumbprint of the private key specified in x509_certificate_path. Use when authenticating with a Service Principal. Required if x509_certificate_path is defined. |
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By default this plugin is using a general group name sanitization to create safe and usable group names for use in Ansible. This option allows you to override that, in efforts to allow migration from the old inventory script and matches the sanitization of groups when the script’s For this to work you should also turn off the TRANSFORM_INVALID_GROUP_CHARS setting, otherwise the core engine will just use the standard sanitization on top. This is not the default as such names break certain functionality as not all characters are valid Python identifiers which group names end up being used as. Choices:
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Merge extra vars into the available variables for composition (highest precedence). Choices:
Configuration:
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Path to the X509 certificate used to create the service principal in PEM format. The certificate must be appended to the private key. Use when authenticating with a Service Principal. |
Notes
Note
For authentication with Azure you can pass parameters, set environment variables, use a profile stored in ~/.azure/credentials, or log in before you run your tasks or playbook with
az login.Authentication is also possible using a service principal or Active Directory user.
To authenticate via service principal, pass subscription_id, client_id, secret and tenant or set environment variables AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID, AZURE_CLIENT_ID, AZURE_SECRET and AZURE_TENANT.
To authenticate via Active Directory user, pass ad_user and password, or set AZURE_AD_USER and AZURE_PASSWORD in the environment.
Alternatively, credentials can be stored in ~/.azure/credentials. This is an ini file containing a [default] section and the following keys: subscription_id, client_id, secret and tenant or subscription_id, ad_user and password. It is also possible to add additional profiles. Specify the profile by passing profile or setting AZURE_PROFILE in the environment.
See Also
See also
- Sign in with Azure CLI
How to authenticate using the
az logincommand.
Examples
# The following host variables are always available:
# public_ipv4_addresses: all public IP addresses, with the primary IP config from the primary NIC first
# public_dns_hostnames: all public DNS hostnames, with the primary IP config from the primary NIC first
# private_ipv4_addresses: all private IP addressses, with the primary IP config from the primary NIC first
# id: the VM's Azure resource ID, eg /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-1111-1111aaaabb/resourceGroups/my_rg/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/my_vm
# location: the VM's Azure location, eg 'westus', 'eastus'
# name: the VM's resource name, eg 'myvm'
# os_profile: The VM OS properties, a dictionary, only system is currently available, eg 'os_profile.system not in ['linux']'
# powerstate: the VM's current power state, eg: 'running', 'stopped', 'deallocated'
# provisioning_state: the VM's current provisioning state, eg: 'succeeded'
# tags: dictionary of the VM's defined tag values
# resource_type: the VM's resource type, eg: 'Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachine', 'Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachineScaleSets/virtualMachines',
# 'microsoft.azurestackhci/virtualmachineinstances'
# vmid: the VM's internal SMBIOS ID, eg: '36bca69d-c365-4584-8c06-a62f4a1dc5d2'
# vmss: if the VM is a member of a scaleset (vmss), a dictionary including the id and name of the parent scaleset
# availability_zone: availability zone in which VM is deployed, eg '1','2','3'
# creation_time: datetime object of when the VM was created, eg '2023-07-21T09:30:30.4710164+00:00'
#
# The following host variables are sometimes available:
# computer_name: the Operating System's hostname. Will not be available if azure agent is not available and picking it up.
# The following host variables are available for Azure Stack HCI vms:
# customLocation: the azure arc custom location.
# virtual_machine_memoryMB: RAM allowed (static)
# virtual_machine_processors: number of vCPUs
# sample 'myazuresub.azure_rm.yaml'
# required for all azure_rm inventory plugin configs
plugin: azure.azcollection.azure_rm
# forces this plugin to use a CLI auth session instead of the automatic auth source selection (eg, prevents the
# presence of 'ANSIBLE_AZURE_RM_X' environment variables from overriding CLI auth)
auth_source: cli
# fetches VMs from an explicit list of resource groups instead of default all (- '*')
include_vm_resource_groups:
- myrg1
- myrg2
# fetches VMs from VMSSs in all resource groups (defaults to no VMSS fetch)
include_vmss_resource_groups:
- '*'
# fetches VMs from Azure StackHCI in specific resource groups (defaults to no HCI vm fetch)
include_hcivm_resource_groups:
- myrg1
# places a host in the named group if the associated condition evaluates to true
conditional_groups:
# since this will be true for every host, every host sourced from this inventory plugin config will be in the
# group 'all_the_hosts'
all_the_hosts: true
# if the VM's "name" variable contains "dbserver", it will be placed in the 'db_hosts' group
db_hosts: "'dbserver' in name"
# adds variables to each host found by this inventory plugin, whose values are the result of the associated expression
hostvar_expressions:
my_host_var:
# A statically-valued expression has to be both single and double-quoted, or use escaped quotes, since the outer
# layer of quotes will be consumed by YAML. Without the second set of quotes, it interprets 'staticvalue' as a
# variable instead of a string literal.
some_statically_valued_var: "'staticvalue'"
# overrides the default ansible_host value with a custom Jinja2 expression, in this case, the first DNS hostname, or
# if none are found, the first public IP address.
ansible_host: (public_dns_hostnames + public_ipv4_addresses) | first
# change how inventory_hostname is generated. Each item is a jinja2 expression similar to hostvar_expressions.
hostnames:
- tags.vm_name
- default_inventory_hostname + ".domain.tld" # Transfer to fqdn if you use shortnames for VMs
- default # special var that uses the default hashed name
# places hosts in dynamically-created groups based on a variable value.
keyed_groups:
# places each host in a group named 'tag_(tag name)_(tag value)' for each tag on a VM.
- prefix: tag
key: tags
# places each host in a group named 'azure_loc_(location name)', depending on the VM's location
- prefix: azure_loc
key: location
# places host in a group named 'some_tag_X' using the value of the 'sometag' tag on a VM as X, and defaulting to the
# value 'none' (eg, the group 'some_tag_none') if the 'sometag' tag is not defined for a VM.
- prefix: some_tag
key: tags.sometag | default('none')
# excludes a host from the inventory when any of these expressions is true, can refer to any vars defined on the host
exclude_host_filters:
# excludes hosts in the eastus region
- location in ['eastus']
- tags['tagkey'] is defined and tags['tagkey'] == 'tagvalue'
- tags['tagkey2'] is defined and tags['tagkey2'] == 'tagvalue2'
# excludes hosts that are powered off
- powerstate != 'running'
# includes a host to the inventory when any of these expressions is true, can refer to any vars defined on the host
include_host_filters:
# includes hosts that in the eastus region and power on
- location in ['eastus'] and powerstate == 'running'
# includes hosts in the eastus region and power on OR includes hosts in the eastus2 region and tagkey value is tagvalue
- location in ['eastus'] and powerstate == 'running'
- location in ['eastus2'] and tags['tagkey'] is defined and tags['tagkey'] == 'tagvalue'
Hint
Configuration entries for each entry type have a low to high priority order. For example, a variable that is lower in the list will override a variable that is higher up.