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Automating the creation of an Ansible hosts file from Terraform.
If you have VMs, you need to configure them. Ansible is a configuration management tool, enabling automation at scale through code.
Ansible requires a host file that lists machines to define what is under its control.
An example of a hosts file is shown below (screenshot is taken from https://www.azurecitadel.com/arc/servers-hack/scale/):
Maintaining this list quickly becomes challenging, so this is where automating the creation of it from the Terraform output comes in.
First, you’ll need to create a template file:
A variable in your variables.tf file (set it to true!):
In outputs.tf
The module.windows_vms are module.linux_vms modules are set to output the FQDNs:
This code is taken from https://github.com/azurecitadel/arc-onprem-servers if you want to grab it and unpick it further!
Want more Terraform content? Check out my other articles on Terraform here!
Cheers! 🍻
