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Groups
Before we talk about how to define groups later in this chapter, let's understand what Groups are.
Groups map Hosts - manageable machines specified by hostnames or IPs - into sets of machines that can be given particular orders at the same time.
Groups Organize Hosts
Some ideas to think about:
- Groups do not need to specify that all systems in a group are alike, whether that means their roles or operating systems.
- Groups typically represent something having a common location (like a datacenter, region, or availability zone), property (hardware type), or function that would warrant special attention or variance in configuring machines in that group.
- Groups can overlap, with a system being in more than one group. Any amount is fine.
- Groups can have subgroups, where they automatically include all the systems in child groups below them. Subgroups can continue to arbitrary levels of depth.
- Group hierarchies do not have to represent a tree, but do represent a graph. The graph technically can have cycles, but Jet will not get caught in any infinite loops. Cycles can sometimes result in some unexpected variable precedence behavior. Try to avoid cycles.
- Groups can have variables assigned to them that apply to all hosts in the group, and these variables can be used in templates and the Jet playbook language. Sometimes a group will never be addressed in configuration, but is there to only apply certain variables.
Examples of groups names might be things like "us-east-1", "testlab", "build-nodes", or "webservers".
Last modified 4d ago