referencing the instance id of an EC2 resource just created in Ansible

Question

I am having a difficult time referencing the instance id of an EC2 resource that I have just created. After I create it, I would immediately like to terminate it. My code is below:

Thank you, Bill

---
- name: Example of provisioning servers
  hosts: 127.0.0.1

  connection: local
  tasks:
   - name: set_fact1
     set_fact: foo = 1

   - name: Create security group
     local_action:
       module: ec2_group
       name: ep2
       description: Access to the Episode2 servers
       region: us-east-1
       rules:
         - proto: tcp
           from_port: 22
           to_port: 22
           cidr_ip: 0.0.0.0/0

   - name: Launch instances
     local_action:
       module: ec2
       instance_tags:
        Name: server1
        Env: myenv
       region: us-east-1
       keypair: ansiblekeypair
       group: ep2
       instance_type: m1.small
       image: ami-1aae3a0c
       count: 1
       wait: yes
     register: ec2

   - name: Terminate instances that were previously launched
     ec2:
       state: absent
       region: us-east-1
       instance_ids: "{{ ec2.instance_id[0] }}"
     with_items: ec2

Answer 1

You need to reference ec2.instances[0].id .

It is useful to use - debug: var=ec2 task or run playbook with -vv switch to see detailed values of registered variables and check what properties are available for use.

Answer 2

If you want to terminate the instances just launched (assuming that their tags are specific) you could also use the exact_count facility:

   exact_count: 0
   count_tag: 
     - Name: server1
     - Env: myenv

As per the doc (highlights are mine):

exact_count

An integer value which indicates how many instances that match the count_tag parameter should be running. Instances are either created or terminated based on this value.

and count_tag :

Used with exact_count to determine how many nodes based on a specific tag criteria should be running . [...]

It would give something like:

- name: Terminate instances
     local_action:
       module: ec2
       instance_tags:
        Name: server1
        Env: myenv
       region: us-east-1
       keypair: ansiblekeypair
       exact_count: 0
       count_tag: 
         - Name: server1
         - Env: myenv
       wait: yes