AnsibleFest london Feb 18th 2016 Fabrizio Maccioni Managing Your Cisco Datacenter Network with Ansible

1. Managing Your Cisco Datacenter
Network with Ansible
Fabrizio Maccioni
Technical Marketing Engineer
fabrimac@cisco.com
@fabrimaccioni

2. 2© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Session Objective:
Abstract
As IT organizations adopt the cloud strategyto build agile data centers, they
realize the need to move fast and drive higher levels of innovation.
One of the key components is automation for reliable provisioning and
management of the datacenter network.
Join us as we discuss how Ansible can be leveraged to manage your Cisco
data center network.

3. 3© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Session NOT Objective:
Explain what Ansible is
Try to sell Ansible and/or Cisco gear
Deep dive on Ansible modules

4. Agenda
What problems are we trying to solve?
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
Cisco Nexus before Ansible 2.0
New features introducedin Ansible 2.0
References and Joint RedHat/Ansible/Ciscoinitiatives

5. Agenda
What problems are we trying to solve?
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
Cisco Nexus before Ansible 2.0
New features introducedin Ansible 2.0
References and Joint RedHat/Ansible/Ciscoinitiatives

6. 6© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Why?
“I can spin up servers in minutes with my Ansible Playbooks,
why does it take orders of magnitude more to spin up and affect
change on my Network Elements?”
“IT Organizations using configuration management tools
deploy 30x more frequently with 200x shorter lead times;
they have 60x fewer failures and recover 168x faster”
2015 State of DevOps Report

7. 7© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
ServicesNetwork
Data CenterAutomation and IT Collaboration
Today: SerializedConfigurationand Management
SUCCESSFUL
DEPLOYMENT
Slow
Error Prone
ApplicationsCompute
Application
Requirements

8. 8© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
ServicesNetwork
Data CenterAutomation and IT Collaboration
Today: SerializedConfigurationand Management
SUCCESSFUL
DEPLOYMENT
ApplicationsCompute
Application
Requirements

9. 9© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Access
Core
DC Network Transformation
Legacy 3 tiers Architecture
Aggregation

10. 10© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Leaf
Spine
Huge Fabrics: many Spines and 100s Leaves
DC Network Transformation
Modern Fabrics Architecture
Border Leaf
Huge Fabrics: many Spines and 100s Leaves
Scale
Consistency
L3

11. 11© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Huge Fabrics: many Spines and 100s Leaves
Ansible and Cisco: Better Together
Huge Fabrics: many Spines and 100s LeavesNetwork, Servers and Applications Configurations managed by Ansible
… Cisco UCS
Cisco Nexus
Fabric

12. Agenda
What problems are we trying to solve?
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
Cisco Nexus before Ansible 2.0
New features introducedin Ansible 2.0
References and Joint RedHat/Ansible/Ciscoinitiatives

13. 13© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Why Ansible?
• Everybody talks about Ansible!!
• Streamlined and Fast
• Yaml is easy
• Good Documentation
• Agentless!
• Agentless!!
• Agentless!!!
Must be cool!!
https://clusterhq.com/assets/pdfs/state-of-container-usage-june-2015.pdf
Which container orchestration tools
are you considering?

14. 14© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
(Via SSH/HTTP[S])
(Via ssh)
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
How Ansible TypicallyWorks
CLI

15. 15© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Show
clock
NXAPI Web Server
(NGINX)
{
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"method": "cli",
"params": {
"cmd": "show clock",
"version": 1
},
"id": 1
}
{
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"result": {
"body": {
"simple_time": "15:00:37.762 PST Mon Aug 18 2014n"
}
},
"id": 1
}
HTTP / HTTPS
Switch(config)# feature nxapi
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
Technology Enabler: NX-API

16. 16© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
NXAPI Web Sandbox (1) Point browser to IP Address of Network Element
(2) Enter CLI Commands
(2) See formatted input as you type (3) See formatted output in json/xml
(3) Click POST (4) Generate Python script

17. 17© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
System
Physical
eth1/1,
eth1/2…
BGP
BGP router
ID, peers…
ARP
ARP
entries
VRF
VRF
instances
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
Object Model

18. 18© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
Object Model

19. 19© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
System
BgpEntity BgpInstance BgpDomain BgpPeer
BgpLocalASN
BgpPeerAf
BgpPeerEntry
L1PhysIf
ethpmPhysIf ethpmPortCap
L1Load
L1StormControl
Globally unique identifier for an object in the database
Naming rule on http://developer.cisco.com
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
Object Model
sys/bgp/inst/dom-default/peer-[192.168.0.2]sys/phys-[eth1/1]/phys/portcap

20. 20© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Python
API
BashTCL
CLI(VSH)
NGINIX
Server
Data Management Engine
Netconf
Transport: SSH
Data: XML
Object Store
SNMP
Agent
SNMP
NX-API
REST
Netconf
Client
BGP LACP ACL QoSVLAN
Transaction Commit Status: Success/Raise
Fault
1
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
Object Model
NX-API
CLI

21. 21© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
Object Model: Native vs Open Models
Data Management Engine
Transport: SSH
Data: XML
Object Store
BGP LACP ACL QoSVLAN
Transaction Commit Status: Success/Raise
Fault
NX-API
REST
Model Mapping

22. Agenda
What problems are we trying to solve?
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
Cisco Nexus before Ansible 2.0
New features introducedin Ansible 2.0
References and Joint RedHat/Ansible/Ciscoinitiatives

23. 23© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Cisco Nexus before Ansible 2.0
how to
1. Install pycsco Open Source Library
2. Clone nxos-ansible Ansible Modules Repository
And follow instructions at
https://github.com/jedelman8/nxos-ansible
3. Test some Playbooks
https://github.com/jedelman8/nxos-ansible/tree/master/test-playbooks

24. 24© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Command SNMP groupSNMP Server
SNMP
Community
SNMP user
Interface VTP VLAN
AAAserverAAAServer host
ACL
Copy
DirFeature File Copy
Get Facts
Get Interface
Get IPv4
Interface
Get Neighbors HSRP IGMP
NTP Switchport VPC
UDLD
Cisco NX-OS Configuration
Cisco Nexus before Ansible 2.0
Modules
https://github.com/jedelman8/nxos-ansible/tree/master/library

25. 25© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Cisco Nexus before Ansible 2.0
Sample Playbook: VLAN configuration

26. Agenda
What problems are we trying to solve?
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
Cisco Nexus before Ansible 2.0
New features introduced in Ansible 2.0
References and Joint RedHat/Ansible/Ciscoinitiatives

27. 27© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
New features introduced in Ansible 2.0
Key Features
• New Nexus Core Modules!!
nxos_config Manage Cisco NXOS configuration sections
nxos_command Run arbitrary command on Cisco NXOS devices
nxos_template Manage Cisco NXOS device configurations over SSH or NXAPI
• Support for different transports
SSH and NX-API
• Several new useful Options
delegate_to,waitfor, force, backup, retries,before/after and more!

28. 28© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
New features introduced in Ansible 2.0
Key Features
• IOS/IOS-XE and IOS-XR Core Modules
• ios_config Manage Cisco IOS configuration sections
• ios_template Manage Cisco IOS device configurations over SSH

29. 29© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
New features introduced in Ansible 2.0
How to
1. Install pycsco Library
2. Clone nxos-ansible Repository
3. Follow instructions at
https://github.com/jedelman8/nxos-ansible
Test some Playbooks
https://github.com/ansible/test-nxos.git

30. 30© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
New features introduced in Ansible 2.0
Sample Playbook

31. 31© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
ServicesNetwork
Cisco And Ansible: Better Together
SUCCESSFUL
DEPLOYMENT
ApplicationsCompute
Application
Requirements
ACCELERATE APPLICATION DEPLOYMENT
Open NX-OS
Open Ecosystem
Ansible Native Support

32. Agenda
What problems are we trying to solve?
Ansible Overview on Cisco Nexus
Cisco Nexus before Ansible 2.0
New features introducedin Ansible 2.0
References and Joint RedHat/Ansible/Ciscoinitiatives

33. 33© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
References
Ansible
http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/list_of_network_modules.html
GitHub
https://github.com/datacenter
https://github.com/datacenter/opennxos
https://github.com/datacenter/nxos-ansible
Cisco
§ http://www.cisco.com/go/ansible

34. 34© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
http://developer.cisco.com
Cisco Open Initiative: DevNet
Community
Developer
Support
Events

35. 35© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Joint RedHat/Ansible/Cisco initiatives
1. RedHat/Ansible Press Release, February
2. Ansible on Cisco Nexus Webinar, March
3. Cisco Modules update
4. Ansible on Cisco Nexus White Paper
5. More to come…
Ansible Modules

36. 36© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Managing Your Cisco Datacenter Network with Ansible

37. Fabrizio Maccioni
Technical Marketing Engineer
fabrimac@cisco.com
@fabrimaccioni