By default, Ansible will look for group variables in the same directory as the playbook called group_vars for variables that can be applied to the group. By default, it will look for the file name that matches the group name. For example, if we have a group called [nexus-devices] in the inventory file, we can have a file under group_vars named nexus-devices to house all the variables applied to the group.

We can also use a file called all to include variables applied to all the groups.

We will utilize this feature for our username and password variables:

$ mkdir group_vars

Then, we can create a YAML file called all to include the username and password:

$ cat group_vars/all
---
username: cisco
password: cisco

We can then use variables for the playbook:

    vars:
      nexus_devices: {
       "nx-osv-1": {
          "hostname": "nx-osv-1",
          "username": "{{ username }}",
          "password": "{{ password }}",
          "vlans": [100, 200, 300],
        <skip>
         "nx-osv-2": {
          "hostname": "nx-osv-2",
          "username": "{{ username }}",
          "password": "{{ password }}",
          "vlans": [100, 200, 300],
        <skip>