Ansible group variable evaluation with local actions - ansible

Question

I have an an Ansible playbook that includes a role for creating some Azure cloud resources. Group variables are used to set parameters for the creation of those resources. An inventory file contains multiple groups which reference that play as a descendant node.
The problem is that since the target is localhost for running the cloud actions, all the group variables are picked up at once. Here is the inventory:
[cloud:children]
cloud_instance_a
cloud_instance_b
[cloud_instance_a:children]
azure_infrastructure
[cloud_instance_b:children]
azure_infrastructure
[azure_infrastructure]
127.0.0.1 ansible_connection=local ansible_python_interpreter=python
The playbook contains an azure_infrastructure play that references the actual role to be run.
What happens is that this role is run twice against localhost, but each time the group variables from cloud_instance_a and cloud_instance_b have both been loaded. I want it to run twice, but with cloud_instance_a variables loaded the first time, and cloud_instance_b variables loaded the second.
Is there anyway to do this? In essence, I'm looking for a pseudo-host for localhost that makes it think these are different targets. The only way I've been able to workaround this is to create two different inventories.

Answer 1

It's a bit hard to guess how you playbook look like, anyway...
Keep in mind that inventory host/group variables are host-bound, so any host always have only one set of inventory variables (variables defined in different groups overwrite each other).
If you want to execute some tasks or plays on your control machine, you can use connection: local for plays or local_action: for tasks.
For example, for this hosts file:
[group1]
server1
[group2]
server2
[group1:vars]
testvar=aaa
[group2:vars]
testvar=zzz
You can do this:
- hosts: group1:group2
connection: local
tasks:
- name: provision
azure: ...
- hosts: group1:group2
tasks:
- name: install things
apk: ...
Or this:
- hosts: group1:group2
gather_facts: no
tasks:
- name: provision
local_action: azure: ...
- name: gather facts
setup:
- name: install things
apk:
In this examples testvar=aaa for server1 and testvar=zzz for server2.
Still azure action is executed from control host.
In the second example you should turn off fact gathering and call setup manually to prevent Ansible from connecting to possibly unprovisioned servers.