How to pause the playbook at the end of each host group?

Question

I am performing rolling updates in several cluster. Each cluster is a group in inventory.

I want to pause the playbook when a cluster is done (a group of hosts) and not after every host.

- hosts: 127.0.0.1
  connection: local
  gather_facts: no

  tasks:

  - name: prompt 1
    pause: 
      prompt: prompt1
    run_once: true

  - name: prompt 1
    pause:
      prompt: prompt2
    run_once: true

- hosts: "{{ target }}"
  gather_facts: no
  serial: 1
  become: yes
  become_method: sudo
  ignore_unreachable: true

  roles:
    - app

I would like to pause the playbook after one host group before the next host group begin.

For eg, If I have the group called eu_app, us_app, then after deploying all hosts in group eu_app, playbook has to wait for 15 minutes to deploy for next group us_app.

I tried using loop_control with group_names but it is pausing the playbook even for child groups present for the parent group. Pause should happen only for parent group.

U880D · Answer 1 · 2023-08-16T22:56:20.977

I want to pause the playbook when a cluster is done (a group of hosts) ... I would like to pause the playbook after one host group before the next host group begin.

According the documentation and example under Playbook execution, a minimal example with hosts like

[eu_app]
eu1.example.com
eu2.example.com
eu3.example.com

[us_app]
us1.example.com
us2.example.com
us3.example.com

ansible-inventory -i hosts --graph
@all:
  |--@eu_app:
  |  |--eu1.example.com
  |  |--eu2.example.com
  |  |--eu3.example.com
  |--@us_app:
  |  |--us1.example.com
  |  |--us2.example.com
  |  |--us3.example.com
  |--@ungrouped:

and playbook like

---
- hosts: eu_app
  become: false
  gather_facts: true

  tasks:

  - name: Show Facts
    debug:
      msg: "{{ item }}"
    when: item == inventory_hostname
    loop: "{{ ansible_play_hosts }}"

  - name: Make sure service has time to start or stop
    pause:
      seconds: 900 # 15 min
    when: not ansible_check_mode

- hosts: us_app
  become: false
  gather_facts: true

  tasks:

  - name: Show Facts
    debug:
      msg: "{{ item }}"
    when: item == inventory_hostname
    loop: "{{ ansible_play_hosts }}"

will result into the requested execution.

An other approach is shown under How to put pause between Ansible roles?

How to pause the playbook at the end of each host group?

1 Answers1