Ansible: YAML inventory for staging / production hosts

Question

I can't setup inventory which will be easy and useful in yml format for Ansible Playbook :(

For example:

all:
  children:
    db:
      children:
        production:
          hosts:
            1.1.1.1:

        staging:
          hosts:
            11.11.11.11:

    web:
      children:
        production:
          hosts:
            2.2.2.2:

        staging:
          hosts:
            22.22.22.22:

So, I have two playbooks with:

playbook-db.yml

...
hosts:
  - db

and playbook-web.yml

...
hosts:
  - db

And I want to use this inventory like:

andible-playbook -D playbook-db.yml --limit=staging

I am expecting that my playbook will be used only db and staging hosts, but playbook is applying for all staging hosts: 11.11.11.11 and 22.22.22.22 (but I am expecting 11.11.11.11 only) :(

How I can realize it correctly?

Answer 1

It seems you have a misunderstanding about the inventory file, since ansible is doing as you described

ansible-inventory -i your-posted-file.yml --list

emits

{   ...
    "all": {
        "children": [
            "db",
            "ungrouped",
            "web"
        ]
    },
    "db": {
        "children": [
            "production",
            "staging"
        ]
    },
    "production": {
        "hosts": [
            "1.1.1.1",
            "2.2.2.2"
        ]
    },
    "staging": {
        "hosts": [
            "11.11.11.11",
            "22.22.22.22"
        ]
    }

showing that the db group has all members of production and staging, but staging has hosts "11.11.11.11", "22.22.22.22" just as you described

I think perhaps you were conflating the yaml indentation with membership, but that's not how ansible inventories work.

What is far more likely is that you'd want a db-staging and db-production group, for the case you described where you want only db hosts that are staging, leaving the db group to mean every db member