Red Hat Ansible for Network Automation

Procedure 2.3. Instructions

1. Execute ad hoc commands to find out if the utility and tower machines are reachable from cs01. The IPv4 addresses of utility and tower are 172.25.250.8 and 172.25.250.9. Hint: cs01 is an IOS device, so investigate the ios_ping module.

   [student@workstation ~]$ ansible -m ios_ping -a "dest=172.25.250.8" cs01
   SSH password: student
   ...output omitted...
   [student@workstation ~]$ ansible -m ios_ping -a "dest=172.25.250.9" cs01
   SSH password: student
   ...output omitted...

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2. Create a playbook in your Ansible project directory, named iosping2.yml, that does what you did with ad hoc commands in the previous step.

   Create a file named iosping2.yml with content similar to the following:

   ---
   - name: A reachability test
     hosts: cs01
   
     tasks:
   
     - name: Test reachability to 172.25.250.8
       ios_ping:
         dest: 172.25.250.8
   
     - name: Test reachability to 172.25.250.9
       ios_ping:
         dest: 172.25.250.9

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3. Run the play in your playbook using the ansible-playbook command. Provide student when prompted for a password.

   [student@workstation proj]$ ansible-playbook iosping2.yml
   SSH password: student
   ...output omitted...

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4. Create a playbook that checks key system indicators, but for all devices on the network. What are “key system indicators?” They are the commands that you would use on the command line of a network device to check its health status. All of those can be automated as tasks within Ansible Playbooks. Most can probably be executed remotely as an Ansible ad hoc command. For convenience and as an illustration, it is suggested to display at least the host name, uptime, domain name, and system time. Use the vyos_pass and ios_pass extra command-line variables method, as shown earlier in this document, to set the ansible_pass variable to different values.

   Create a file named multi-vendor-syscheck.yml with content similar to the following:

   ---
   - name: back up config and inspect health on vyos
     hosts: vyos
     vars:
       ansible_password: "{{ vyos_pass }}"
   
     tasks:
   
     - name: backup config
       vyos_command:
         commands:
         - sh host name
         - sh system uptime
         - sh host domain
         - sh host date
         - sh host os
       register: results
   
     - name: show results
       debug:
         var: results.stdout
   
   - name: back up config and inspect health on ios
     hosts: ios
     vars:
       ansible_password: "{{ ios_pass }}"
   
     tasks:
   
       - name: backup config
         ios_config:
           backup: yes
   
       - name: look at system elements
         ios_command:
           commands:
           - sh ver | include uptime
           - sh ip domain
           - sh clock
           - sh ip name-server
         register: results
   
       - name: show results
         debug:
           var: results.stdout

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5. Run the play in your playbook using the ansible-playbook command.

   [student@workstation ~]$ ansible-playbook \
   > -e 'vyos_pass=vyos ios_pass=student' multi-vendor-syscheck.yml
   SSH password: anything
   ...output omitted...

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