Ansible | Deploy VM then run additional playbooks against new host? - ansible

Question

I am fairly new to Ansible. I have created an Ansible role that contains the following tasks that will deploy a vm from a template, then configure the VM with custom OS settings:
create-vm.yml
configure-vm.yml
I can successfully deploy a VM from a template via the "create-vm" task. But after that is
complete, I would like to continue with the "configure-vm" task. Since the playbooks/role-vm-deploy.yml file contains "localhost" as shown here...
- hosts: localhost
roles:
- vm-deploy
gather_facts: no
connection: local
... the next task doesn't run successfully because it is attempting to run the task against "localhost" and not the new VM hostname. I have since added the following to the end of the "create-vm" task...
- name: Add host to group 'just_created'
add_host:
name: '{{ hostname }}.{{ domain }}'
groups: just_created
...but I'm not quite sure what to do with it. I can't quite wrap my head around what else I need to do and how to call the new hostname in the "configure-vm" task instead of localhost.
I am executing the playbook via CLI
# ansible-playbook playbooks/role-vm-deploy.yml
I saw this post, which was kind of helpful
I also saw the dynamic inventory documentation, but it's a bit over my head at this juncture. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!
Here are the contents for the playbooks and tasks
### playbooks -> role-vm-deploy.yml
- hosts: localhost
roles:
- vm-deploy
gather_facts: no
connection: local
### roles -> vm-deploy -> tasks -> main.yml
- name: Deploy VM
include: create-vm.yml
tags:
- create-vm
- name: Configure VM
include: configure-vm.yml
tags:
- configure-vm
### roles -> vm-deploy -> tasks -> create-vm.yml
- name: Clone the template
vmware_guest:
hostname: '{{ vcenter_hostname }}'
username: '{{ vcenter_username }}'
password: '{{ vcenter_pwd }}'
validate_certs: False
name: '{{ hostname }}'
template: '{{ template_name }}'
datacenter: '{{ datacenter }}'
folder: '/'
hardware:
memory_mb: '{{ memory }}'
num_cpus: '{{ num_cpu }}'
networks:
- label: "Network adapter 1"
state: present
connected: True
name: '{{ vlan }}'
state: poweredon
wait_for_ip_address: yes
### roles -> vm-deploy -> tasks -> configure-vm.yml
### This task is what I need to execute on the new hostname, but it attempts to execute on "localhost" ###
# Configure Networking
- name: Configure IP Address
lineinfile:
path: '{{ network_conf_file }}'
regexp: '^IPADDR='
line: 'IPADDR={{ ip_address }}'
- name: Configure Gateway Address
lineinfile:
path: '{{ network_conf_file }}'
regexp: '^GATEWAY='
line: 'GATEWAY={{ gw_address }}'
### roles -> vm-deploy -> defaults -> main.yml
- All of the variables reside here including "{{ hostname }}.{{ domain }}"

Answer 1

You got so close! The trick is to observe that a playbook is actually a list of plays (the yaml objects that are {"hosts": "...", "tasks": []}), and the targets of subsequent plays don't have to exist when the playbook starts -- presumably for this very reason. Thus:
- hosts: localhost
roles:
- vm-deploy
gather_facts: no
connection: local
# or wherever you were executing this -- it wasn't obvious from your question
post_tasks:
- name: Add host to group 'just_created'
add_host:
name: '{{ hostname }}.{{ domain }}'
groups: just_created
- hosts: just_created
tasks:
- debug:
msg: hello from the newly created {{ inventory_hostname }}