## Inventory

Inventory is a collection of hosts (nodes) with associated data and groupings that Ansible can connect and manage.

- Hosts (nodes)
- Groups
- Inventory-specific data (variables)
- Static or dynamic sources

We've already discussed inventory in our review of Ansible's key components.

Inventory consists of hosts, groups, inventory specific data. Inventory can either be static or dynamic.

Inventory is a collection of the hosts (nodes) with associated metadata and groupings that Ansible can connect and manage. An inventory source can be static files or dynamically retrieved from an external system.

You can specify a different inventory file using the `-i <path>` option on the command-line or your Ansible configuration file.