# Group ec2 instances and local machines together

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/group-ec2-instances-and-local-machines-together/21498>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [May 19, 2016, 10:59pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/group-ec2-instances-and-local-machines-together/21498 "2016-05-19T22:59:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Alex\_Braun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@Alex\_Braun](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Alex_Braun)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 10:59pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/group-ec2-instances-and-local-machines-together/21498/1 "2016-05-19T22:59:20Z")

</div>

I want to run a playbook with some group\_vars on some Amazon EC2 instances and on some local machines. Is there some way that I can group EC2 instances (by tag) and local machines under the same inventory group?

For instance:

inventory/dev.yml

```auto
macbookpro ansible_ssh_host=1.2.3.4

[dev]
macbookpro # some local machine (not necessarily localhost)
tag_branch_dev # EC2 tag

```

playbooks/setup-dev.yml

```auto
- hosts: dev
roles:
- role: users
become: true

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![alexey.vazhnov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b487fb/32.png) [@alexey.vazhnov](https://forum.ansible.com/u/alexey.vazhnov)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 12:56pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/group-ec2-instances-and-local-machines-together/21498/2 "2016-05-20T12:56:21Z")

</div>

Yes, just put your static inventory and EC2 dynamic inventory script in one folder.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Josh\_Smift1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bcef8e/32.png) [@Josh\_Smift1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Josh_Smift1)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 2:03pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/group-ec2-instances-and-local-machines-together/21498/3 "2016-05-20T14:03:04Z")

</div>

We wrote a sort of meta-inventory script to do this kind of thing;  
[https://github.com/caredotcom/ansible-quartermaster](https://github.com/caredotcom/ansible-quartermaster) might be useful (as  
is, as an example, as a warning, etc :^).

(Wanting AWS things things with tag\_whatever\_foo, and static things in  
group 'foo', to both end up in the same Ansible group, was a big motivation.)

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-Josh (jbs@care.com)

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