Ansible Server and Network Automation
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This document provides an overview and introduction to Ansible and how it can be used for server and network device automation. It describes Ansible's key features such as being agentless, using YAML playbooks to define automation tasks, and supporting both Linux/Unix and network devices. The document demonstrates examples of using Ansible to automate tasks on Linux servers and Cisco network devices. It also provides resources for learning more about Ansible including recommended books, websites, and links to documentation and tutorials.
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Ansible Server and Network Automation
- 1. www.anm.com Ansible: Server and Network Device Automation Klaus Mueller & Ian Logan www.anm.com June 8, 2018
- 2. www.anm.com Who we are Klaus Mueller Senior Solutions Architect, ANM • Route/Switch CCIE #5450 • 30+ years experience in IT • 20 years experience working with State/Local, Healthcare, Education, and Commercial in New Mexico • Specialize in campus and data center networks Ian Logan Senior Solutions Architect, ANM • 20 years at NMSU – Data center architecture – Private networks for energy management systems – Unix & Linux systems administration • Specialize in data center virtualization and automation
- 3. www.anm.comwww.anm.com ANM is headquartered in Albuquerque, NM and operates in Colorado, Texas and New Mexico. In addition to Albuquerque, ANM has offices in Denver (CO), Colorado Springs (CO) and El Paso (TX).
- 4. www.anm.com Evolution of Network Configuration First Cisco Router 1986 Latest Cisco Router 2018 CLI via console and Telnet CLI via console and SSH
- 5. www.anm.com There are tools… … but they are costly and frustrating …and often go un-/under-used
- 6. www.anm.com …and old habits die hard… Notepad Copy & Paste
- 7. www.anm.com Meanwhile in Servers… Server Virtualization Linux DevOps Chef/Puppet PowerShell Cloud vRA Technologies Methodologies Tools Open Source
- 8. www.anm.com To be fair… Data Center Network Fabrics Cisco ACI VMware NSX Software Defined Networks Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Network Programmability APIs and Standards NetDevOps “Infrastructure as Code”
- 9. www.anm.com More on “Software Defined” Software Defined Networks Many approaches: • Controller-based, centralized data plane (e.g. OpenFlow) • Central policy engine (e.g. Cisco ACI) Focus has been on data center – ACI, Vmware NSX Evolving to WAN (SD-WAN – e.g. Viptela, Riverbed), and Access (SD-Access – e.g. Cisco Digital Network Architecture, aka DNA) Very promising, still early in adoption in most orgs.
- 10. www.anm.com “The Holy Grail” Be like Facebook Automatically deploy a fully populated rack of servers and network gear with minimal intervention. Or somewhere in between… • Standardized configs • Automated deployment • Push changes quickly • Automate repetitive tasks
- 11. www.anm.com Network Engineers need new skills
- 12. www.anm.com • Python – Scripting • Linux (or Mac OS X) – Using open-source tools • Templating – Jinja • Programmability – REST APIs – YAML, JSON, XML – NETCONF • Data Models – YANG Network Engineers need new skills
- 13. www.anm.com “DevOps Tools” can help bridge the gap • Automation – Configuration deployment and management • Open Source • Community Driven • Many learning resources • Chef and Puppet – Agent-based • Ansible and Salt – Agent-less
- 14. www.anm.com • Agent-less • Works well for both network and servers • Idempotent configuration management • Modular framework • Supported by Red Hat • Works with templates and variables • Communicates over SSH • Simple templating language (Playbooks = YAML) Ansible – “The Easier Button”
- 16. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive How would you describe Ansible in one sentence? • A tool for expressing the desired state of a system at a high level.
- 17. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive • Ansible plays nicely with just about everyone!
- 18. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive • Requirements for installing Ansible – Python 2.6/2.7 or 3.5 and newer – A Unix like system to act as the control machine
- 19. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Playbook Ansible Engine Managed Node SSH • Inventory Host File • API • Modules • Password Vault • Unix/Linux/Windows • Cisco IOS/NXOS/ACI • vSphere • And many more… • A YAML doc • Living MOP
- 20. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive • Choices on installing Ansible – Vendor packages or Python pip – Packages might be a little stale but ease of maintenance is probably worth it.
- 21. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive • We’ll use CENTOS 7.5 for our examples. • Its that easy.
- 22. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive • Ansible’s master config file – ansible.cfg ANSIBLE_CONFIG Env. variable ansible.cfg Incurrent directory $HOME/.ansible.cfg /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg The first one found wins
- 23. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive We’ll take all the defaults except for 2 lines
- 24. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Ansible’s inventory system: • A simple text file. • Dynamic inventory from AWS, OpenStack, etc. • You can use both simultaneously.
- 25. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Ansible host file: • INI style formatting • Group names are in [] • Hosts can belong to multiple groups • Groups can be nested
- 26. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Linux demo environment: – Precreated a user named “ansible” on each machine – SSH authorized_keys configuration – Added sudo configuration for the ansible user – These steps are all optional, but they make the demo easier.
- 27. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Ansible one liners for Linux:
- 28. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Ansible facts & variables: • Facts are variables that describe the system being managed • Facts can be automatically gathered • You reference a variable with “{{ variable }}”
- 29. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Ansible facts & variables: • You can get all of the facts for a device with a one liner – ansible ios-devices -c network_cli -m ios_facts – ansible linux -m setup
- 30. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive • Gathering facts takes a while • On a Linux host it there are over 100 facts • Output from many one liners will be in JSON
- 31. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Ansible playbooks: • Playbooks are our tool for automating complex tasks. • Playbooks also allow us to express orchestration across multiple managed nodes. • They’re written as YAML documents.
- 32. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive YAML: • Indentation matters!! – Indent to group related items • # begins a comment • - - - begins a YAML document • - to denote list elements
- 33. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive A sample playbook: • Hosts: the target nodes • Become* do we need elevated privileges? • Tasks: list of things to do – We call these plays • Yum is an ansible module – Name: httpd – a RPM name – State: present or absent
- 34. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Running a playbook:
- 35. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Playbooks can be executable scripts: • Add a “#!/usr/bin/ansible-playbook” as the first line • Make the file executable
- 36. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Lets get rid of Apache:
- 37. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive One more Linux playbook: • One play with two tasks
- 38. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive
- 39. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Lets look at a Network playbook: • Inventory_hostname is a builtin variable
- 40. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive {{ inventory_hostname }} is replaced with the name of the current node
- 41. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive • We can iterate across lists with items • Parents are how we change the config context for IOS
- 42. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive
- 43. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Make sure you write the entire command! – Ios_config module makes comparisons between the playbook and the running config. – If its not an exact match, the command is executed at every run.
- 44. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive We’re not using SSH keys to login to the router, where’s the password? • We can store the password in a variable. • Variables can be stored in encrypted files called vaults.
- 45. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive How do we organize per host or group variables? • We can put them in the playbook itself. • We can create host/group variables in the host_vars/group_vars directory. – One file for each host/group.
- 46. www.anm.com Ansible – Deep dive Host variables for an IOS device • Ansible_connection: network_cli removes the need for python on the node • Ansible_network_os: ios, vyos, junos, etc. • Ansible_ssh_pass: the login password
- 47. www.anm.com Choosing What to Automate
- 48. www.anm.com DevOps: “The 3 Ways” via Gene Kim, et al see “The Phoenix Project” and “The DevOps Handbook”
- 49. www.anm.com E.g. Use Cases • Regular, repetitive tasks • Large-scale infrequent tasks – pushing config changes to large number of devices • In-frequent tasks that require consistency – e.g. device deployment • Building Flow: Theory of Constraints – manual tasks that take a long time that can be automated • Pushing configs to multiple device • Templatizing config changes • Automating config changes • Automating deployments • Reporting and compliance
- 52. www.anm.com Websites • Ansible Website: www.ansible.com – Documentation, Quick Start videos, Tutorials • Cisco DevNet: developer.cisco.com – Free login – Free training • "Network Programmability for Network Engineers” • Ansible videos and learning labs
- 53. www.anm.com Links • Ansible.com – Documentation and Quick Start videos: docs.ansible.com • Developer.cisco.com – ”Introduction to Ansible” https://learninglabs.cisco.com/lab/ansible-02_ansible-intro/step/1 – “NetDevOps” videos – Ansible for Cisco configuration management https://developer.cisco.com/video/net-prog-basics/05-netdevops – “Getting Hands on with Ansible” Learning Lab https://learninglabs.cisco.com/lab/ansible-03_ansible-hands-on/step/1
- 54. www.anm.com Contact Us • See us at ANM table in the Vendor Fair – Demo capability • Email us: – Klaus.Mueller@anm.com – Ian.Logan@anm.com • https://www.slideshare.net/klausternm • www.anm.com