How can i specify the same target host twice or more in my playbook ?

[ishan jain]

I have a situation for which we have decided to allow multiple instances of the same app to run on same host machines. I do not want to modify my playbook or inventory to incorporate this temporary hack and was wondering if i can do that simply by modifying host list and some of the variables. 

So i need to know two main things:

1) Is there a way i can repeat a target host in my playbook ? I have tried repeating the hostname in the comma separated list but that doesn't work

2) How can i override some variables for this repeated host ?

[J Hawkesworth]

I think you are going to have to change, or at least add something to do this.

I would do this by adding a temporary inventory file and group vars.  

If you have inventory with groups like

[webservers]
host1 app_folder=/opt/instance1


[database]
host1 app_folder=/opt/instance2

then you can have a playbook that does something like the following:

hosts: webservers:
roles:
   - install_app


hosts: database
roles:
   - install_app

if install_app uses app_folder

as the installation dir for app then you can get 2 

Don't forget you can set defaults in your role so that you only have to provide an override for the hosts that need it.

I have an inventory file which has all the same group names as my test and production inventories, but only 1 actual host, which points at a virtual machine which I can revert back to a 'blank' snapshot.  I use this a lot for developing my provisioning playbooks.

Hope this helps,

Jon