How can I run an imported Ansible playbook for each unique value in a set of host vars?

[Ewan]

I've got a playbook which needs to run against my entire inventory, with a list of hostnames as an extra variable (`target_hosts`).

The hosts in `target_hosts` all have a `group_id` hostvar defined on them. I use the whole inventory because some ancillary hosts which correspond to the `group_id` var need per-group configuration to match in one section.

There will often be multiple `group_id` values associated with the hosts in the `target_hosts` list. I need to select the correct inventory group of ancillary hosts and import/run a playbook to configure both sets of servers partway through the main playbook.

This is what I currently do:

    include_playbook: group-configure.yaml
    vars:
      src_hosts: "group-{{ group_id }}-ancillary-1"
      dest_hosts: "{{ target_hosts }}"

I currently have to manually separate the `target_hosts` by `group_id` manually, then run the main playbook once for each. This has tons of unnecessary overhead.

What I really want to execute is this:

    for each group of hosts from `target_hosts` with the same `group_id` hostvar:
      import and run group-configure.yaml with:
        src_hosts: "ancillary-{{ group_id }}"
        target_hosts: restricted to those with that value of `group_id`'

How can I do this? If the current way this is structured won't work, what's the best alternative approach?

Thanks for any help!

Ewan

[Matthieu Ducorps]

The easiest way to target a group of host is to sepcify it when you trigger call your ansible-playbook command, to have it working properly you need to target all hosts in the playbook itself,

# group-configure.yaml

- name: group-configure

  hosts: all

  tasks:

    …

# /group-configure.yaml

Then run the playbook on the group of your inventory

ansible-playbook -l target_hosts group-configure.yaml

hope that help.

Matth