How to exclude specific host from inventory from a playbook run in Ansible?

Suppose you want to exclude a troublesome host (bad_host) from a particular playbook run. Try using a negated ‘limit’ option:

$ ansible-playbook --limit 'all:!bad_host' playbook.yml

1	$ ansible-playbook --limit 'all:!bad_host' playbook.yml

By using –limit argument with ansible-playbook command we can exclude a host from playbook execution. If hostname starts with “!” it will excluded from host execution.

Lets say if we want to exclude host1 and host2 from ansible-playbook execution use following command:

$ ansible-playbook --limit '!hoost1:!host2' yourPlaybook.yml

1	$ ansible-playbook --limit '!hoost1:!host2' yourPlaybook.yml

To exclude only host1 from execution use following command:

$ ansible-playbook --limit '!hoost1' yourPlaybook.yml

1	$ ansible-playbook --limit '!hoost1' yourPlaybook.yml

To execute only in host1 and host2 from execution use following command:

$ ansible-playbook --limit 'hoost1:host2' yourPlaybook.yml

1	$ ansible-playbook --limit 'hoost1:host2' yourPlaybook.yml

To execute only in host1 use following command:

$ ansible-playbook --limit 'hoost1' yourPlaybook.yml

1	$ ansible-playbook --limit 'hoost1' yourPlaybook.yml

To exclude host1 and host2 from execution and allow execution only in host3:

$ ansible-playbook --limit '!hoost1:!host2:host3' yourPlaybook.yml

1	$ ansible-playbook --limit '!hoost1:!host2:host3' yourPlaybook.yml

Reference
https://s905060.gitbooks.io/site-reliability-engineer-handbook/ansible__exclude_host_from_playbook_execution.html#

Author
Recent Posts

Rajesh Kumar

DevOps Architect - Mentor - Coach - Trainer at Cotocus

Email - DevOps@RajeshKumar.xyz
CV - www.RajeshKumar.xyz
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajeshkumarin/

Total, Over 15 years of extensive experience working with more than 8 software MNCs for software development/maintenance and production environments involved in continuous improvement and automating entire life cycle using latest devops tools and techniques from design and architecture, through implementation, deployment, and successful operations. Also, helping more than 70 software organizations globally, providing coaching, mentoring and consulting in devops, CICD, cloud, containers and operations.

I help software organization to improve a quality of the software, reducing the software development/operational cost and immediate feedback/monitoring. Have in-depth working experience in following domains with real project implementation.

- Test Driven DevOps Approach
- Continuous Integration
- Continuous Delivery
- Continuous Deployment
- Continuous Inspection
- Technical Debt Reduction
- Containerization/Micro Services Using Kubernetes & Docker
- Cloud Migration using AWS
- Production Monitoring & Postmortem