Add a way to launch a new instance on every run

[elnur]

Summary

ec2_instance — back when it was just ec2 — would start a new instance on every run. At some point, it stopped doing that. Now, if there's an existing instance matching some properties of the instance I'm trying to create, it would target that instance instead of launching a new one.

Given that Ansible tasks are supposed to be idempotent, I guess the new way of working makes more sense. But there are cases where I need the old behavior.

I browsed the docs of the module and couldn't find anything — like a flag — to force creation of a new instance. Either I'm missing something, or it's just impossible to do it anymore.

A workaround I'm currently using to reproduce the old behavior is appending the current timestamp to the name of the instance. That makes the Name tag unique and hence it launches a new instance on every run. But it'd be nice to have a more elegant solution.

I'm proposing to add a new state like launched which would do exactly that — launch a new instance.

Issue Type

Feature Idea

Component Name

ec2_instance

Additional Information

No response

Code of Conduct

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