Background slides to a demo I did for the World Wide Technology (wwt.com) Advanced Technology Center core builders team meeting 22 May 2015

1. Copyright © 2015 World Wide Technology, Inc. All rights reserved.
Software-Defined Networking
Ansible Tower | Docker | ACI
ATC Core Builders Meeting – 22 May 2015
Joel W. King
Technical Solutions Architect
Enterprise Networking Solutions
Engineering and Innovations

2. Ansible
• Ansible is an open source automation tool.
• Designed to be easy for anyone to understand and learn.
• Does not require custom scripting or code….
… however I’ve written code to manage Cisco ACI fabrics.
APIC

3. Ansible Tower
• Ansible has two commercial offerings-
• Ansible Consulting & Training Services
• Ansible Tower
• Ansible Tower – Web GUI front-end to
open source Ansible code
• ROLE-BASED ACCESS CONTROL
• JOB SCHEDULING
• PUSH-BUTTON JOB RUNS
• AUDIT TRAIL
• PULL FROM SOURCE CONTROL

4. Ansible Tower Demo
• Playbooks can be stored / version controlled
in GitHub.
• Playbook downloads
a file
to multiple
hosts
in the
ATC
SDNControllers
in ATC
management network10.255.40.207 10.255.40.78
SCM Update

5. Docker
• What is Docker?
• Open platform for developing, shipping, and running applications.
• Separates applications from the infrastructure.
• How does Docker do this?
• Combines a container virtualization platform,
• Plus software to build apps into containers, distribute / ship, and deploy.
• Containers are
• Isolated and secure application platform,
• OS image + user-added files + meta-data,
• Similar to a directory,
• Hold everything for an app to run.
client
serverACI
demo
fabric
app
Netcat

6. • Tower initiates Python modules
to apply policy to tenant in ACI
fabric.
• Tower initiates Python application
installed in Docker container
on client machine.
Ansible Tower – Apply ACI policy and run Docker app
x-docker-client
x-docker-server-1
.10
.1
.1
.10
192.0.2.0 / 24
TEST-NET-1
198.51.100.0 / 24
TEST-NET-2
Bridge Domain
TEST-NET-2
Bridge Domain
TEST-NET-1
management network
policy
app

7. Key take-away
• Networks increasingly are operated with combination of open source software
and vendor hardware and software plus user written software.
• Git / GitHub – open source version control
• Ansible – open source automation tool
• Docker - open platform to build, ship, and run distributed applications
• Open source enterprise offerings
• Ansible Tower – Commercial GUI front-end to Ansible (also training)
• Docker Inc. - Support, training, and professional services
• Vendor Hardware and Software –
• Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI)
• User written software
• aci_install_config.py Python module called by Ansible to configure fabric using ACI controller (APIC)
• aci_gather_facts.py Python module called by Ansible to query APIC