ansible-local vs ansible-remote why would you use one over the other?

Matzuba

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Nov 9, 2016, 8:55:21 PM11/9/16

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Hey

sorry if this has been asked but i didn't see much in the history to aid me.

I'm having trouble understanding what really is the difference between ansible-remote and ansible-local as provisioners to build an AMI within AWS.

We typically use ansible in its standard setup with SSH on our other projects for general CM/ad-hoc tasks run. I understand that ansible-local will copy the playbook to the remote node/ami instance i am building and run. I understand that ansible-remote will do the same/similar over SSH but i am not getting why i would choose one method over the other?

What are the pro/cons with either approach and why would i choose one over the other? As i wish to use playbooks using our standard config management and not just when building an AMI, i was thinking remote was the way to go but a lot seem to be using ansible-local which i have just tested and works fine. I understand there maybe slight differences to the playbooks written for each method and would prefer to stick with one method for both workloads.

Cheers

Alvaro Miranda Aguilera

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Nov 10, 2016, 1:52:46 AM11/10/16

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My undersrtanding is

local doesn't require ansible to be installed on the host where packer is running.

Alvaro

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Alvaro

Rickard von Essen

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Nov 10, 2016, 2:17:10 AM11/10/16

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Pros ansible-remote:
Doesn't require ansible to be installed on the target i.e. the instance building the AMI. Simplify using complex setup of ansible playbooks (over multiple repository etc), and usage of ansible-vault.

Cons ansible-remote:
Requires ansible to be installed on the host i.e. you can't build from Windows.

Pros/cons ansible-local: basically the reverse of the above.

If you are heavy ansible users and don't run ansible-pull I would start by trying to use ansible-remote since that is similar to what you use now days.

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Matzuba

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Nov 10, 2016, 5:12:27 AM11/10/16

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Thanks for the replies guys!

I will have a management host that will be used to run Ansible for the whole platform so i will go with remote.