[Short Tip] Use Red Hat Satellite 6 as an inventory resource in Ansible

Besides static file inventories, Ansible can use custom scripts to dynamically generate inventories or access other sources, for example a CMDB or a system management server – like Red Hat Satellite.
Luckily, Nick Strugnell has already written a custom script to use Satellite as an inventory source in Ansible.

After checking out the git, the hammer.ini needs to be adjusted: at least host, username, password and organization must be adjusted.

Afterwards, the script can be invoked directly to show the available hosts:

$ ansible -i ~/Github/ansible-satellite6/satellite-inventory.py all --list-hosts
    argon.example.com
    satellite-server.example.com
    helium.example.com
...

This works with ansible CLI and playbook calls:

$ ansible-playbook -i ~/Github/ansible-satellite6/satellite-inventory.py apache-setup.yml
PLAY [apache setup] *********************************************************** 

GATHERING FACTS *************************************************************** 
...

The script works quite well – as long as the certificate you use on the Satellite server is trusted. Otherwise the value for self.ssl_verify must be set to False. Besides, it is a nice and simple way to access already existing inventory stores. This is important because Ansible is all about integration, and not about “throwing away and making new”.