Ansible - is it possible to add tags to hosts inside inventory?

Question

As the topic says, my question is if its possible to add tags to the hosts described inside the inventory?

My goal is to be able to run the ansible-playbook on specific host/group of hosts which has that specific tag e.g only on servers with tag 'Env=test and Type=test'

So for example when I run the playbook:

ansible-playbook -i hosts test.yml --extra-vars "Env=${test} Type=${test}"

I will pass the tags in the command and it will run only on the filtered hosts.

Thanks a lot!

Update:

Alternatively maybe doing something like in dynamic inventory? https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/dev_guide/developing_inventory.html#developing-inventory

[tag_Name_staging_foo]

[tag_Name_staging_bar]

[staging:children]
tag_Name_staging_foo
tag_Name_staging_bar

Answer 1

To answer your question

Is it possible to add tags to hosts inside inventory to run the ansible-playbook on a specific host/group of hosts?

No, tags apply ONLY to the tasks

When you apply tags: attributes to structures other than tasks, Ansible processes the tag attribute to apply ONLY to the tasks they contain. Applying tags anywhere other than tasks is just a convenience so you don’t have to tag tasks individually.

Answer 2

Hosts don't have ansible "tags"; tasks have tags and they'e used to conditionally execute the tasks, not conditionally target hosts.

There's a few ways to conditionally target hosts, and the best way in my experience is ansible groups. Put the hosts you want to target in a group; then either target this group directly in a play:

 - hosts: my_host_group
   tasks: [ ... ] 

Or limit the playook to a subset of the hosts targeted in a play:

ansible-playbook -l my_limited_hosts_group playbook.yaml