awx/docs/inventory_refresh.md

Inventory Refresh Overview

Tower should have an inventory view that is more aligned towards systems management rather than merely maintaining inventory for automation.

Inventory Source Promotion

Starting with Tower 3.2, InventorySource will be associated directly with an Inventory.

Fact Searching and Caching

Smart Inventory

Starting in Tower 3.2, Tower will support the ability to define a Smart Inventory. You will define the inventories using the same language we currently support in our Smart Search.

Inventory Changes

• The Inventory model has a new field called kind. The default of this field will be blank for normal inventories and set to smart for smart inventories.

• Inventory model as a new field called host_filter. The default of this field will be blank for normal inventories. When host_filter is set AND the inventory kind is set to smart is the combination that makes a Smart Inventory.

Smart Filter (host__filter)

The SmartFilter class handles our translation of the smart search string. We store the filter value in the host_filter field for an inventory. This value should be expressed the same way we express our existing smart searches.

host_filter="search=foo"
host_filter="group__search=bar"
host_filter="search=baz and group__search=bang"
host_filter="name=localhost or group__name=local"

Creating a new Smart Inventory for all of our GCE and EC2 groups might look like this:

HTTP POST /api/v2/inventories/

{
    "name": "GCE and EC2 Smart Inventory",
    "kind": "smart",
    "host_filter": "group__search=ec2 and group__search=gce"
    ...
}

Acceptance Critera

When verifying acceptance we should ensure the following statements are true:

• Inventory has a new field named kind that defaults to empty and can only be set to smart.
• Inventory has a new field named host_filter to empty and can only be set to a valid SmartFilter string.
• Inventory with a host_filter set and a kind of smart will have a hosts list reflecting the results of searching /hosts with the same smart search that is set in the host_filter.

API Concerns

There are no breaking or backwards incompatible changes for this feature.

Other Changes

Inventory update all inventory__sources

A new endpoint /api/v2/inventories/:id/update_inventory_sources has been added. This endpoint functions in the same way that /api/v2/inventory_source/:id/update functions for a single InventorySource with the exception that it updates all of the inventory sources for the Inventory.

HTTP GET /api/v2/inventories/:id/update_inventory_sources will list all of the inventory sources and if they will be updated when a POST to the same endpoint is made. The result of this request will look like this:

{
    [
        {"inventory_source": 1, "can_update": True},
        {"inventory_source": 2, "can_update": False},
    ]
}

When making a POST to the same endpoint, the response will contain a status as well as the job ID for the update.

POST /api/v2/inventories/:id/update_inventory_sources

{
    [
        {"inventory_update": 20, "inventory_source": 1, "status": "started"},
        {"inventory_update": 21, "inventory_source": 2, "status": "Could not start because `can_update` returned False"}
    ]
}

Background deleition of Inventory

InventorySource Hosts and Groups read-only