Ansible Mirror Inventory Project

An Ansible mirror inventory project, also known as a mirror inventory project or reference inventory project, is an open-source specialized type of Ansible inventory project that integrates Vagrant project functionality to mimic real-world infrastructure locally. It combines Ansible automation with Vagrant for virtual machine orchestration, enabling Ansible engineers to develop, test, and validate Ansible content and configurations in a controlled, local environment.

The Ansible mirror inventory project serves as a cornerstone of the C2 Platform approach, aligning with the open, unless principle and complementing the Ansible development environment. It acts as an open-source counterpart to a closed-source inventory project in a government domain or data center, mirroring its structure and functionality while providing a reference implementation for prototyping and validation.

As Jeff Geerling notes in his book Ansible for DevOps , this setup is essential for simulating real-world infrastructure locally, allowing engineers to “mimic” production-like environments on their development desktops.

Key Features

• Integration of Inventory and Vagrant: Combines the structure of an inventory project, including inventory files, playbooks, and group variables, with a Vagrantfile for defining virtual machines, networks, and provisioning steps. For more details on this integration, see Vagrant project .

• Local Simulation: Enables testing of Ansible collections and roles against virtualized hosts that mirror actual infrastructure, promoting consistency and repeatability.

• GitOps Alignment: Supports GitOps practices by managing changes through environment branches and merge requests, facilitating promotion across simulated environments.

Examples

Key examples of Ansible mirror inventory projects include:

• C2 Ansible Reference Inventory Project ( c2platform/c2/ansible-inventory)
• Ansible Inventory Project for the PHX Platform Reference Implementation ( c2platform/phx/ansible)
• RWS GIS Platform Ansible Mirror Inventory Project ( c2platform/rws/ansible-gis)
• Ansible Inventory Project for the CD Platform Reference Implementation ( c2platform/pol/ansible)

Additional Information

• Reference Implementations: An open-source, fully functional example of a system that mirrors a closed-source setup.
• Development Environment: The development environment is a key C2 Platform concept for Ansible engineering: a reproducible setup that can be realized either as a local self-managed environment or as a hosted seat provided by C2 Platform.
• Vagrant project: A directory structure that uses Vagrant to define and manage virtual development environments, integrating Ansible in the C2 Platform for local infrastructure simulation.