sample.md

sample of a playbook that just uses localhost for a bunch of AWS tasks

---
- hosts: localhost
  tasks:
  - name: make a VPC for my app
    register: vpc
    ec2_vpc:
       region: us-west-2
       state: present
       cidr_block: 172.30.0.0/16
       subnets:
         - cidr: 172.30.1.0/24
           az: us-west-2c
           resource_tags: { "Environment":"Dev", "Tier" : "Misc" }
         - cidr: 172.30.2.0/24
           az: us-west-2a
           resource_tags: { "Environment":"Dev", "Tier" : "Main" }
         - cidr: 172.30.3.0/24
           az: us-west-2b
           resource_tags: { "Environment":"Dev", "Tier" : "Reserve" }
       internet_gateway: True
       route_tables:
           - subnets:
             - 172.30.1.0/24
             - 172.30.2.0/24
             - 172.30.3.0/24
             routes:
               - dest: 0.0.0.0/0
                 gw: igw
  - ec2:
      key_name: ryansb
      region: us-west-2
      instance_type: t2.large
      image: ami-d0f506b0
      wait: yes
      instance_tags:
        foo: bar
      exact_count: 1
      count_tag: foo
      assign_public_ip: yes

In a normal playbook (executing on a group of remote hosts) if you wanted to interleave tasks going to 3rd parties like AWS, you'd do something like:

  - file: name=/tmp/something state=file
  - ec2:
      key_name: ryansb
      region: us-west-2
      instance_type: t2.large
      image: ami-d0f506b0
      wait: yes
      instance_tags:
        foo: bar
      exact_count: 1
      count_tag: foo
      assign_public_ip: yes
    delegate_to: localhost
    run_once: true
  - command: cat /proc/cpuinfo

So that way the file and command tasks run on all hosts, but only one instance is created (by the Ansible master)