How do i optimize performance of Ansible playbook with regards to ssh connections

I have the below playbook test1.yml that gets istat data for 26 subfolders under this directory /var/myfile/pdf.

tasks:

  • name: List directoriesraw: "ls -d “/var/myfile/pdf/*/”
    register: subdir

  • name: List pid files
    raw: “istat {{ item }}”
    with_items: “{{ subdir.stdout_lines }}”

I run the playbook and it takes 29 seconds to complete

time ANSIBLE_SSH_PIPELINING=True ansible-playbook -i=10.9.9.12, -f 30 test1.yml -vvv

After the playbook completes below is the time taken details output:

Output:

real 0m29.144s user 0m6.206s sys 0m5.618s

I now put the same code with istat task in include_tasks` file like below.

Playbook test2.yml

tasks:

  • name: List directories
    raw: "ls -d “/var/myfile/pdf/*/”
    register: subdir

  • name: List pid files
    include_tasks: “innertest.yml”
    with_items: “{{ subdir.stdout_lines }}”

cat innertest.yml

  • raw: “istat {{ item }}” time ANSIBLE_SSH_PIPELINING=True ansible-playbook -i=10.9.9.12, -f 30 test2.yml -vvv

Output:

real 0m59.044s user 0m18.203s sys 0m10.118s

As you can see the time with the same amount of task has more than doubled due to include_tasks

In the debug, I also see there are 26 ssh connections triggered for the 26 sub-directories with_items for the same target host 10.9.9.12

I’m not sure of how this works internally but it would have been nice to have a single ssh connection for istat for 26 sub-directories on the same host for performance reasons.

Is there a way to increase the performance for include_tasks and bringing down the number of ssh connections to the same host ?

I have the below playbook test1.yml that gets istat data for 26 subfolders under this directory /var/myfile/pdf.

tasks:

- name: List directories
raw: "ls -d "/var/myfile/pdf/*/"
register: subdir

- name: List pid files
raw: "istat {{ item }}"
with_items: "{{ subdir.stdout_lines }}"

What kind of server / device is that? I would rather use "find" module instead of "raw".
What does istat actually?

Regards
          Racke