Dynamic Device Inventory

Dynamic Inventory refers to the process of building the Ansible device inventory by programmatically querying a source of truth (SoT) system for all devices. This has the benefit of always reflecting the SoT in the IAG device inventory, of being easily refreshed, and simplifies the creation of an inventory by leveraging the dynamic plugin. The plugin is then responsible for the generation of the inventory and any filtering or advanced querying capabilities would be determined by the features of the plugin.

There are a variety of Ansible plugins available from the broader Ansible and open source communities for this type of capability. In this guide, the following plugins are covered, along with steps to create their device inventory.

➟ Nautobot
➟ NetBox
➟ ServiceNow
➟ SolarWinds
➟ ZPE Cloud