azure_rm – Azure Resource Manager inventory plugin

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_host to 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 via hostvar_expressions; see examples.

Requirements

The below requirements are needed on the local master node that executes this inventory.

  • python >= 2.7

  • azure >= 2.0.0

Parameters

Parameter Choices/Defaults Configuration Comments
ad_user
string
Active Directory username. Use when authenticating with an Active Directory user rather than service principal.
adfs_authority_url
string
added in 2.6
Azure AD authority url. Use when authenticating with Username/password, and has your own ADFS authority.
api_profile
string
added in 2.5
Default:
"latest"
Selects an API profile to use when communicating with Azure services. Default value of latest is appropriate for public clouds; future values will allow use with Azure Stack.
auth_source
string
added in 2.5
    Choices:
  • auto
  • cli
  • credential_file
  • env
  • msi
Controls the source of the credentials to use for authentication.
If not specified, ANSIBLE_AZURE_AUTH_SOURCE environment variable will be used and default to auto if variable is not defined.
auto will follow the default precedence of module parameters -> environment variables -> default profile in credential file ~/.azure/credentials.
When set to cli, the credentials will be sources from the default Azure CLI profile.
Can also be set via the ANSIBLE_AZURE_AUTH_SOURCE environment variable.
When set to msi, the host machine must be an azure resource with an enabled MSI extension. subscription_id or the environment variable AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID can be used to identify the subscription ID if the resource is granted access to more than one subscription, otherwise the first subscription is chosen.
The msi was added in Ansible 2.6.
batch_fetch
-
Default:
"yes"
To improve performance, results are fetched using an unsupported batch API. Disabling batch_fetch uses a much slower serial fetch, resulting in many more round-trips. Generally only useful for troubleshooting.
cert_validation_mode
string
added in 2.5
    Choices:
  • ignore
  • validate
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 ignore. Can also be set via credential file profile or the AZURE_CERT_VALIDATION environment variable.
client_id
string
Azure client ID. Use when authenticating with a Service Principal.
cloud_environment
string
added in 2.4
Default:
"AzureCloud"
For cloud environments other than the US public cloud, the environment name (as defined by Azure Python SDK, eg, AzureChinaCloud, AzureUSGovernment), or a metadata discovery endpoint URL (required for Azure Stack). Can also be set via credential file profile or the AZURE_CLOUD_ENVIRONMENT environment variable.
conditional_groups
-
A mapping of group names to Jinja2 expressions. When the mapped expression is true, the host is added to the named group.
default_host_filters
-
Default:
["powerstate != \"running\"", "provisioning_state != \"succeeded\""]
A default set of filters that is applied in addition to the conditions in exclude_host_filters to exclude powered-off and not-fully-provisioned hosts. Set this to a different value or empty list if you need to include hosts in these states.
exclude_host_filters
-
Default:
[]
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.
fail_on_template_errors
-
    Choices:
  • yes ←
  • no
Default:
"yes"
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)
hostvar_expressions
-
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).
include_vm_resource_groups
-
Default:
["*"]
A list of resource group names to search for virtual machines. '\*' will include all resource groups in the subscription.
include_vmss_resource_groups
-
Default:
[]
A list of resource group names to search for virtual machine scale sets (VMSSs). '\*' will include all resource groups in the subscription.
keyed_groups
-
Creates groups based on the value of a host variable. Requires a list of dictionaries, defining key (the source dictionary-typed variable), prefix (the prefix to use for the new group name), and optionally separator (which defaults to _)
password
string
Active Directory user password. Use when authenticating with an Active Directory user rather than service principal.
plain_host_names
boolean
added in 2.8
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
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.
plugin
- / required
    Choices:
  • azure_rm
marks this as an instance of the 'azure_rm' plugin
profile
string
Security profile found in ~/.azure/credentials file.
secret
string
Azure client secret. Use when authenticating with a Service Principal.
subscription_id
string
Your Azure subscription Id.
tenant
string
Azure tenant ID. Use when authenticating with a Service Principal.
use_contrib_script_compatible_sanitization
boolean
added in 2.8
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
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 ``replace_dash_in_groups`` option is set to ``False``. To replicate behavior of ``replace_dash_in_groups = True`` with constructed groups, you will need to replace hyphens with underscores via the regex_replace filter for those entries.
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.

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 login command.

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'
# 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


# sample 'myazuresub.azure_rm.yaml'

# required for all azure_rm inventory plugin configs
plugin: 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:
- '*'

# 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

# 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']
# excludes hosts that are powered off
- powerstate != 'running'

Status

Authors

  • UNKNOWN

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If you notice any issues in this documentation, you can edit this document to improve it.

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.