diff --git a/files/copy b/files/copy
index 8f2843b314d..99c3391083b 100644
--- a/files/copy
+++ b/files/copy
@@ -31,6 +31,10 @@ options:
   src:
     description:
       - Local path to a file to copy to the remote server; can be absolute or relative.
+        If path is a directory, it is copied recursively. In this case, if path ends
+        with "/", only inside contents of that directory are copied to destination.
+        Otherwise, if it does not end with "/", the directory itself with all contents
+        is copied. This behavior is similar to Rsync.
     required: false
     default: null
     aliases: []
@@ -42,7 +46,8 @@ options:
     default: null
   dest:
     description:
-      - Remote absolute path where the file should be copied to.
+      - Remote absolute path where the file should be copied to. If src is a directory,
+        this must be a directory too.
     required: true
     default: null
   backup:
@@ -76,8 +81,8 @@ options:
     required: false
 author: Michael DeHaan
 notes:
-   - The "copy" module can't be used to recursively copy directory structures to the target machine. Please see the
-     "Delegation" section of the Advanced Playbooks documentation for a better approach to recursive copies.
+   - The "copy" module recursively copy facility does not scale to lots (>hundreds) of files.
+     For alternative, see "Delegation" section of the Advanced Playbooks documentation.
 '''
 
 EXAMPLES = '''
@@ -122,6 +127,13 @@ def main():
     md5sum_src = module.md5(src)
     md5sum_dest = None
 
+    # Special handling for recursive copy - create intermediate dirs
+    if original_basename and dest.endswith("/"):
+        dest = os.path.join(dest, original_basename)
+        dirname = os.path.dirname(dest)
+        if not os.path.exists(dirname):
+            os.makedirs(dirname)
+
     if os.path.exists(dest):
         if not force:
             module.exit_json(msg="file already exists", src=src, dest=dest, changed=False)
diff --git a/files/file b/files/file
index 01772a7e71c..cb81bf1ce11 100644
--- a/files/file
+++ b/files/file
@@ -145,6 +145,7 @@ def main():
         argument_spec = dict(
             state = dict(choices=['file','directory','link','hard','touch','absent'], default=None),
             path  = dict(aliases=['dest', 'name'], required=True),
+            original_basename = dict(required=False), # Internal use only, for recursive ops
             recurse  = dict(default='no', type='bool'),
             force = dict(required=False,default=False,type='bool'),
             diff_peek = dict(default=None),
@@ -200,7 +201,11 @@ def main():
         src = os.path.expanduser(src)
 
     if src is not None and os.path.isdir(path) and state not in ["link", "absent"]:
-        params['path'] = path = os.path.join(path, os.path.basename(src))
+        if params['original_basename']:
+            basename = params['original_basename']
+        else:
+            basename = os.path.basename(src)
+        params['path'] = path = os.path.join(path, basename)
 
     file_args = module.load_file_common_arguments(params)