Strategies: linear, free & host_pinned

A strategy plugin decides how hosts march through the tasks of a play. It controls whether they move in step or each go at their own speed.

The default linear strategy runs one task on every host, waits for all to finish, then moves to the next task together.

With linear, the slowest host on each task holds everyone back. Fast servers sit idle waiting for the laggard before the play advances.

The free strategy removes the wall. Each host races through its tasks as fast as it can, never waiting for the others to catch up.

With free, hosts finish at different times and output interleaves. You gain speed but lose the tidy task-by-task synchronization.

Reach for free when hosts are independent and some are much slower. Avoid it when one host must finish a step before another begins.

The host_pinned strategy keeps a worker glued to one host until that host is done, instead of round-robining across the whole fleet.

By finishing hosts fully before grabbing new ones, host_pinned caps how many machines are touched at once, easing load on backends like a license server.

Strategy is a play-level key, so different plays in one file can use different strategies. Pick the best fit for each phase of work.

Choose a project-wide default under the strategy key in ansible.cfg. The per-play setting still wins whenever you override it.

Strategy decides how hosts flow, while forks caps how many run at once. Tune both together to get the throughput you want.

One host in your batch is far slower than the rest and stalls the play.

linear keeps hosts in step, free lets them sprint independently, and host_pinned finishes one host before starting the next. Pick per play. 🏁