Deploying VMs using roles and hosts in Ansible based on operating system
So I managed to keep the same structure roughly, and managed to separate how the machines are generated, however still is a bit fuzzy and can probably be improved to be more efficient!



site.yml

- name: Apply common configuration to all nodes
  hosts: all
  roles:
    - common

- name: Configure and deploy test node 1
  hosts: build-test-node
  roles:
    - build-machine-test-1

- name: Configure and deploy test node 2
  hosts: build-test-node-2
  roles:
    - build-machine-test-2




environments/test/groups

[win_test_1_nodes]
win_build_machine_1

[mac_test_1_nodes]
mac_build_machine_1

[win_test_2_nodes]
win_build_machine_2

[mac_test_2_nodes]
mac_build_machine_2




environments/test/hosts

win_build_machine_1   ansible_host=......
win_build_machine_2   ansible_host=......
mac_build_machine_1   ansible_host=......
mac_build_machine_2   ansible_host=......




environments/test/meta

[win_test_1_nodes]
[mac_test_1_nodes]
[win_test_2_nodes]
[mac_test_2_nodes]

[win:children]
win_test_1_nodes
win_test_2_nodes

[mac:children]
mac_test_1_nodes
mac_test_2_nodes

[build-machine-test-1:children]
win_test_1_nodes
mac_test_1_nodes

[build-machine-test-2:children]
win_test_2_nodes
mac_test_2_nodes




This solution allows more test nodes to be generated with separate roles added to them, and can just be added to the correct group for the machine to be provisioned.