.. _playbooks_delegation:

Controlling where tasks run: delegation and local actions
=========================================================

By default, Ansible gathers facts and executes all tasks on the machines that match the ``hosts`` line of your playbook. This page shows you how to delegate tasks to a different machine or group, delegate facts to specific machines or groups, or run an entire playbook locally. Using these approaches, you can manage inter-related environments precisely and efficiently. For example, when updating your webservers, you might need to remove them from a load-balanced pool temporarily. You cannot perform this task on the webservers themselves. By delegating the task to localhost, you keep all the tasks within the same play.

.. contents::
   :local:

Tasks that cannot be delegated
------------------------------

Some tasks always executed on the control node. These tasks, including ``include``, ``add_host``, and ``debug``, cannot be delegated.
You can determine if an action can be delegated from the ``connection`` attribute documentation.
If the ``connection`` attribute indicates ``support`` is ``False`` or ``None``, then the action does not use a connection and cannot be delegated.

.. _delegation:

Delegating tasks
----------------

If you want to perform a task on one host with the reference to other hosts, use the ``delegate_to`` keyword on a task. This is ideal for managing nodes in a load-balanced pool or for controlling outage windows. You can use delegation with the :ref:`serial <rolling_update_batch_size>` keyword to control the number of hosts executing at one time:

.. code-block:: yaml

    ---
    - hosts: webservers
      serial: 5

      tasks:
        - name: Take out of load balancer pool
          ansible.builtin.command: /usr/bin/take_out_of_pool {{ inventory_hostname }}
          delegate_to: 127.0.0.1

        - name: Actual steps would go here
          ansible.builtin.yum:
            name: acme-web-stack
            state: latest

        - name: Add back to load balancer pool
          ansible.builtin.command: /usr/bin/add_back_to_pool {{ inventory_hostname }}
          delegate_to: 127.0.0.1

The first and third tasks in this play run on 127.0.0.1, which is the machine running Ansible. There is also a shorthand syntax that you can use on a per-task basis: ``local_action``. Here is the same playbook as above, but using the shorthand syntax for delegating to 127.0.0.1:

.. code-block:: yaml

    ---
    # ...

      tasks:
        - name: Take out of load balancer pool
          local_action: ansible.builtin.command /usr/bin/take_out_of_pool {{ inventory_hostname }}

    # ...

        - name: Add back to load balancer pool
          local_action: ansible.builtin.command /usr/bin/add_back_to_pool {{ inventory_hostname }}

You can use a local action to call 'rsync' to recursively copy files to the managed servers:

.. code-block:: yaml

    ---
    # ...

      tasks:
        - name: Recursively copy files from management server to target
          local_action: ansible.builtin.command rsync -a /path/to/files {{ inventory_hostname }}:/path/to/target/

Note that you must have passphrase-less SSH keys or an ssh-agent configured for this to work, otherwise rsync asks for a passphrase.

To specify more arguments, use the following syntax:

.. code-block:: yaml

    ---
    # ...

      tasks:
        - name: Send summary mail
          local_action:
            module: community.general.mail
            subject: "Summary Mail"
            to: "{{ mail_recipient }}"
            body: "{{ mail_body }}"
          run_once: True

.. note::
    - The ``ansible_host`` variable and other connection variables, if present, reflects information about the host a task is delegated to, not the inventory_hostname.
    - The host to which a task is delegated does not inherit variables from the host that is delegating the task.

.. warning::

 Although you can ``delegate_to`` a host that does not exist in inventory (by adding an IP address, DNS name or whatever requirement the connection plugin has), doing so does not add the host to your inventory and might cause issues. Hosts delegated to in this way do inherit variables from the "all" group (assuming :ref:`VARIABLE_PRECEDENCE` includes ``all_inventory``). If you must ``delegate_to`` a non-inventory host, use the :ref:`add host module <add_host_module>`.


.. _delegate_templating:

Templating in delegation context
--------------------------------

Be advised that under delegation, the execution interpreter (normally Python), ``connection``, ``become``, and ``shell`` plugin options will now be templated using values from the delegated to host. All variables except ``inventory_hostname`` will now be consumed from this host and not the original task host. If you need variables from the original task host for those options, you must use ``hostvars[inventory_hostname]['varname']``, even ``inventory_hostname_short`` refers to the delegated host.


.. _delegate_parallel:

Delegation and parallel execution
---------------------------------
By default, Ansible tasks are executed in parallel. Delegating a task does not change this and does not handle concurrency issues (multiple forks writing to the same file).
Most commonly, users are affected by this when updating a single file on a single delegated to host for all hosts (using the ``copy``, ``template``, or ``lineinfile`` modules, for example). They will still operate in parallel forks (default 5) and overwrite each other.

This can be handled in several ways:

.. code-block:: yaml

    - name: "handle concurrency with a loop on the hosts with `run_once: true`"
      lineinfile: "<options here>"
      run_once: true
      loop: '{{ ansible_play_hosts_all }}'

By using an intermediate play with  `serial: 1` or using  `throttle: 1` at the task level, for more detail see :ref:`playbooks_strategies`

.. _delegate_facts:

Delegating facts
----------------

Delegating Ansible tasks is like delegating tasks in the real world - your groceries belong to you, even if someone else delivers them to your home. Similarly, any facts gathered by a delegated task are assigned by default to the `inventory_hostname` (the current host), not to the host that produced the facts (the delegated to host). To assign gathered facts to the delegated host instead of the current host, set ``delegate_facts`` to ``true``:

.. code-block:: yaml

    ---
    - hosts: app_servers

      tasks:
        - name: Gather facts from db servers
          ansible.builtin.setup:
          delegate_to: "{{ item }}"
          delegate_facts: true
          loop: "{{ groups['dbservers'] }}"

This task gathers facts for the machines in the dbservers group and assigns the facts to those machines, even though the play targets the app_servers group. This way you can lookup `hostvars['dbhost1']['ansible_default_ipv4']['address']` even though dbservers were not part of the play, or left out by using ``--limit``.

.. _local_playbooks:

Local playbooks
---------------

It may be useful to use a playbook locally on a remote host, rather than by connecting over SSH.  This can be useful for assuring the configuration of a system by putting a playbook in a crontab.  This may also be used
to run a playbook inside an OS installer, such as an Anaconda kickstart.

To run an entire playbook locally, just set the ``hosts:`` line to ``hosts: 127.0.0.1`` and then run the playbook like so:

.. code-block:: shell

    ansible-playbook playbook.yml --connection=local

Alternatively, a local connection can be used in a single playbook play, even if other plays in the playbook
use the default remote connection type:

.. code-block:: yaml

    ---
    - hosts: 127.0.0.1
      connection: local

.. note::
    If you set the connection to local and there is no ansible_python_interpreter set, modules will run under /usr/bin/python and not
    under {{ ansible_playbook_python }}. Be sure to set ansible_python_interpreter: "{{ ansible_playbook_python }}" in
    host_vars/localhost.yml, for example. You can avoid this issue by using ``local_action`` or ``delegate_to: localhost`` instead.

.. seealso::

   :ref:`playbooks_intro`
       An introduction to playbooks
   :ref:`playbooks_strategies`
       More ways to control how and where Ansible executes
   :ref:`Communication<communication>`
       Got questions? Need help? Want to share your ideas? Visit the Ansible communication guide
