# vmware\_guest spin up multiple VMs at once?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/vmware-guest-spin-up-multiple-vms-at-once/29204>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Tags:** vmware\
**Created:** [December 5, 2018, 3:45pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/vmware-guest-spin-up-multiple-vms-at-once/29204 "2018-12-05T15:45:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tuyen\_Nguyen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3ab097/32.png) [@Tuyen\_Nguyen](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Tuyen_Nguyen)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2018, 3:45pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/vmware-guest-spin-up-multiple-vms-at-once/29204/1 "2018-12-05T15:45:15Z")

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Hi

Is it possible to spin up multiple vmware VMs at once with vmware\_guest? I found something about using with\_items to loop it, but it sounds like it is going to loop it meaning it would spin up the VMs sequentially? I haven’t tested this out yet, but it seems like that is what it would do right? What if I want to spin up 5 or 10 VMs at once, can that be done ? Or should I just plan on running 5 or 10 separate ansible-playlist commands at once to deploy multiple VMs at once?

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**Author:** ![Kai\_Stian\_Olstad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e19adc/32.png) [@Kai\_Stian\_Olstad](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Kai_Stian_Olstad)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 6:31am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/vmware-guest-spin-up-multiple-vms-at-once/29204/2 "2018-12-06T06:31:06Z")

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> Is it possible to spin up multiple vmware VMs at once with vmware\_guest? I  
> found something about using with\_items to loop it, but it sounds like it is  
> going to loop it meaning it would spin up the VMs sequentially? I haven't  
> tested this out yet, but it seems like that is what it would do right?

yes, with\_items will run it sequentially unless you use async.

> What if I want to spin up 5 or 10 VMs at once, can that be done ? Or  
> should I just plan on running 5 or 10 separate ansible-playlist commands at  
> once to deploy multiple VMs at once?

If you specify the new host in a playbook and do delegate\_to: localhost on the create vm task they will run in parallel.  
Default forks is at 5 so it will run 5 at a time unless you change forks so a higher value.