# Forks when hosts are specified in playbooks

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/forks-when-hosts-are-specified-in-playbooks/16289>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [September 19, 2014, 6:25pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/forks-when-hosts-are-specified-in-playbooks/16289 "2014-09-19T18:25:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mzp45](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/43a26b/32.png) [@Mzp45](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Mzp45)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 6:25pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/forks-when-hosts-are-specified-in-playbooks/16289/1 "2014-09-19T18:25:51Z")

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Hello,  
I have a playbook where the hosts are listed by name instead of “all”.

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**Author:** ![David\_Karban](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@David\_Karban](https://forum.ansible.com/u/David_Karban)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 9:34am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/forks-when-hosts-are-specified-in-playbooks/16289/2 "2014-09-20T09:34:50Z")

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Hi,

that is how ansible works, plays are run in order and paralelism is on play level. I would consider to make several groups in your inventory:

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**Author:** ![Mzp45](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/43a26b/32.png) [@Mzp45](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Mzp45)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2014, 7:15pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/forks-when-hosts-are-specified-in-playbooks/16289/3 "2014-09-23T19:15:50Z")

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Hi Dave,  
Thanks for the input. Yeah I kind of know about that but we are not using groups (we do have a reason for that). I’ll keep looking around to see if i can get a solution for this particular problem

Thanks

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**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan1)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2014, 7:18pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/forks-when-hosts-are-specified-in-playbooks/16289/4 "2014-09-23T19:18:56Z")

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“we do have a reason for that” – what’s the reason?

Even having groups of one to designate a role can be a good idea.

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**Author:** ![Mzp45](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/43a26b/32.png) [@Mzp45](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Mzp45)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 1:19pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/forks-when-hosts-are-specified-in-playbooks/16289/5 "2014-09-26T13:19:39Z")

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A lot of our customers are wary about running roles/updates/fixes across multiple hosts. They prefer having granular control and usually specify which systems they need work done on. But at the same time they’d like to keep track of what roles have been applied to each machine.

Thanks

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**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan1)\
**Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 1:37pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/forks-when-hosts-are-specified-in-playbooks/16289/6 "2014-09-27T13:37:24Z")

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This is possibly a good case for a staging environment or rolling updates, Ansible can be configured to fail if a certain % of a batch don’t make it, before adding them back into a pool, etc.

–Michael