Using Infoblox as a dynamic inventory in Red Hat Ansible Tower

Do you still use spreadsheets to keep track of all your device inventory? Do you have Infoblox Appliances deployed in your infrastructure? Do you want to start automating without the burden of maintaining a static register of devices? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this blog is for you.

Operations teams often struggle to keep their Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs) up-to-date, primarily because they were not involved in the specification process to share what pieces of information are relevant to them, or even if they were, once it is put in place: Teams are not allowed to change any of their Configuration Items (CI) because they have only read-only access!

The reality is that a lot of the time when we talk about a CMDB, we are talking about tables in a database without any version control mechanism, therefore only read access is provided to end users.

The impact is that in order to perform lifecycle management (Create/Update/Decommission) of their configuration items, teams must go through a fastidious and manual process until they give up changing CIs (Configuration Items) in the CMDB and just leave everything as it is. What happens next? Different teams start Continue reading