Ansible playbook for VM deletion with validation

Question

This is the playbook that I have for VM deletion in vCenter.

My requirement here is to add a validation to check if the VM is in "poweredoff" state before proceeding for VM deletion, the task of VM deletion should trigger only if the "VM to be removed" is in "poweredoff" state.

If the "VM to be removed" is in "poweredon" state then it should display an message saying "VM is in powered on state."

Need help in adding validation to playbook, Thanks in advance.

---
# VM Automation Playbook
- name: Remove VM
  hosts: localhost 
  connection: local 
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
  - name: Remove VM
    vmware_guest:
      hostname: '{{ vcenter_hostname }}' #The hostname or IP address of the vSphere vCenter or ESXi server.
      username: '{{ vcenter_username }}' 
      password: '{{ vcenter_password }}' 
      validate_certs: False
      datacenter: '{{ datacenter_name }}' #Destination datacenter for the deploy operation.
      name: '{{ vm_name }}' #Name of the VM to be created.
      force: yes
      state: absent #Specify the state the virtual machine should be in.

Answer 1

According the Ansible Collection documentation of Community.Vmware you may use the module vmware_vm_info to return basic info pertaining to a VMware machine guest

- name: Get virtual machine info
  vmware_vm_info:
     hostname: '{{ vcenter_hostname }}'
     username: '{{ vcenter_username }}'
     password: '{{ vcenter_password }}'
     folder: '{{ of_datacenter }}'
     validate_certs: no
     vm_type: vm
   delegate_to: localhost
   register: vm_info

- name: Show 'power_state' of {{ vm_name }}
  debug:
    msg: "{{ item.power_state}}"
  with_items:
    - "{{ vm_info.virtual_machines | json_query(query) }}"
  vars:
    query: "[?guest_name=='{{ vm_name }}']"

as the Return Values will have a power_state .

If the "VM to be removed" is in "poweredon" state then it should display an message saying "VM is in powered on state."

Based on that you could proceed further with the result in the module assert .