In your team, Ansible is used to configure more than 50 EC2 instances, and the playbook files are stored in an S3 bucket. The Ansible playbooks should only be executed locally on the instances which means other hosts such as a jump host cannot run the playbook remotely for the EC2 instances. You also need to run the playbooks for selected instances with specific tags. Which of the following methods is the most appropriate to configure instances via Ansible playbooks?

Answer options:

A.Configure a job in a Jenkins server to execute the Ansible playbooks with a tag parameter. The job uses the tag to determine which instances are included.
B.Create a CloudFormation template with a tag parameter. When the CloudFormation stack is created or updated, EC2 instances with the tag are configured by the Ansible playbooks.
C.Create a Lambda function that gets Ansible playbooks from the S3 bucket and executes the playbooks on selected EC2 instances based on tags.
D.In Systems Manager Run Command, use the AWS-ApplyAnsiblePlaybooks document to run the playbooks on selected EC2 instances.

Correct Answer – D
In the question, as Ansible playbooks need to run locally, you cannot configure other EC2 instances or servers to execute the playbooks. Another requirement is that instances should be managed based on tags. Systems Manager Run Command is a good candidate.
Option A is incorrect: Because the Jenkins server is another host that is not allowed to run the playbooks for selected EC2 instances.
Option B is incorrect: Because CloudFormation is an orchestration tool to configure AWS resources. A CloudFormation stack is not suitable to run Ansible playbooks.
Option C is incorrect: Lambda function still acts as a remote server when executing the Ansible playbooks. It does not align with the requirement of the question.
Option D is CORRECT: With Systems Manager Run Command, users can easily pick up the targets with a tag and Ansible playbooks are executed on Systems Manager managed instances.