Michael's recommendation of putting multiple plays in a playbook worked great for me.
I ran a test and saw that all variables carry over between plays, so that if you do a lot of work to set up state, you don't lose that when you switch to a new play in the middle of a playbook. Here is an example showing the general layout: --- - hosts: dog,cat,opossum sudo: true vars: branch: "{{ NESTED.VARIABLE.BRANCH }}" version: "{{ NESTED.VARIABLE.version }}" pre_tasks: - name: Display all variables/facts known for a host debug: var=hostvars[inventory_hostname] roles: - { role: webserver, tags: [ animals, servers ] } tasks: - name: Complicated task shell: /bin/omg - name: Gather lots of data set_fact: dog_public_ips: "{% for host in groups.get("dog", []) %}{{ hostvars[host]["ec2_public_ip_address"] }} {% endfor %}" cat_public_ips: "{% for host in groups.get("cat", []) %}{{ hostvars[host]["ec2_public_ip_address"] }} {% endfor %}" opossum_public_ips: "{% for host in groups.get("opossum", []) %}{{ hostvars[host]["ec2_public_ip_address"] }} {% endfor %}" - name: Display all variables/facts known for a host debug: var=hostvars[inventory_hostname] ## Just run this section 2 hosts at a time to limit the number of servers disrupted at any given time - hosts: dog,cat,opossum sudo: true serial: 2 tasks: - name: Display all variables/facts known for a host debug: var=hostvars[inventory_hostname] In this, facts like "dog_public_ips" are still available in the second "serial" play. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ansible Project" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ansible-project+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to ansible-project@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ansible-project/ef191483-eab0-4011-b6cf-865990980a92%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.