A Recipe For Success – Using Ansible to Transform Cisco Data Centre Facts into Business-Ready Documentation

One of my favourite recipes is the Hakuna Frittata both because not only am I a big fan of puns, I also enjoy this hearty vegetarian meal that even I can handle putting together.

Inspired by this simple recipe I have decided to try and document my highly successful Ansible Cisco NXOS Facts playbook that captures and transforms raw facts from the data centre into business-ready documentation – automatically.

Ansible Cisco NXOS Facts to Business-Ready Documentation
Prep: 60-90 Min
Cook: 2-3 Min
Serves: An entire enterprise

Ingredients

1 Preheated Visual Studio Code
1 Git repository and Git
1 stick of Linux (a host with Ansible installed and SSH connectivity to the network devices)
3 pinches of Python filters
1 Cup of Ansible playbook (a YAML file with the serially executed tasks Ansible will perform)
1 Cup of Ansible module – NXOS_Facts
2 Tablespoons of Jinja2 Template
1 Teaspoon of hosts file
1 Tablespoon of group_vars
2 Raw Eggs – Cisco NXOS 7000 Aggregation Switches

Helpful Tip

This is not magic but did not necessarily come easy to me. You can use debug and print msg to yourself at the CLI. At each step that I register or have data inside a new variable I like to print it to the screen (one to see what the data, in JSON format, looks like; and two, to confirm my variable is not empty!)

Directions

1. You will need to first setup a hosts file listing your targeted hosts. I like to have a hierarchy as such:

hosts
[DC:children]
DCAgg
DCAccess

[DCAgg]
N7K01
N7K02

[DCAccess]
N5KA01
N5KB01
N5KA02
N5KB02

Or whatever your logical topology resembles.

2. Next we need to be able to securely connect to the devices. Create a group_vars folder and inside create a file that matches your hosts group name – in this case DC.yml

DC.yml
+

3. Create all the various output folder structure you require to store the files the playbook creates. I like something hierarchical again:

4. Create a playbooks folder to store the YAML file format Ansible playbook and a file called CiscoDCAggFacts.yml

In this playbook, which runs serially, we first capture the facts then transform them into business-ready documentation.

First we scope our targeted hosts (hosts: DCAgg)

Then we use the NXOS_Facts module to go gather all of the data. I want all the data so I choose gather_subset : – all but I could pick a smaller subset of facts to collect.

Next, and this is an important step, we take the captured data, now stored in the magic Ansible variable – {{ ansible_facts }} and put that into output files.

Using the | to_nice_json and | to_nice_yaml Python filters we can make the “RAW JSON” inside the variable (one long string if you were to look at it) into human-readable documentation.

4b. Repeatable step

NXOS Facts provides facts that can be put into the following distinct reports:

Platform information (hostname, serial number, license, software version, disk and memory information)
A list of all of the installed Modules hosted on the platform
A list of all IP addresses hosted on the platform
A list of all VLANs hosted on the platform
A list of all of the enabled Features on the platform
A list of all of the Interfaces, physical and virtual, including Fabric Extenders (FEX)
A list of all connected Neighbors
Fan information
Power Supply information

For some of these files, if the JSON data is structured in way that lends itself, I will create both a Comma-Separated Values (csv; a spreadsheet) file and a markdown (md; “html-light”) file. Some of the reports is just the csv file (IPs, Features, VLANs specifically).

The follow code can be copied 9 times and adjusted by updating the references – the task name, the template name, and the output file name – otherwise the basic structure is repeatable.

In order to create the HTML mind map you will also need mark map installed.

Another example of the code – this is the Interfaces section – notice only the name, src, and dest file names need to be updated as well as the MD and HTML file names in the shell command.

5. The Jinja2 Templates

Now that we have finished our Ansible playbook we need to create the Jinja2 templates we reference in the Ansible template module (in the src line)

Create the following folder structure to store the templates:

roles\dc\dc_agg\templates

Then, for each of the 9 templating tasks, create a matching .j2 file – for example the “base facts” as I like to call them – CiscoDCAggFacts.j2

In this template we need an If Else End If structure to test if we are templating csv or markdown then some For Loops to iterate over the JSON lists and key value pairs.

Add a header row with columns for the various fields of data. Reference your Nice JSON file to find the key value pairs.

No “For Loop” is required here just straight data from the JSON

Since its not csv it must be md; so add the appropriate markdown header rows

Then add the data row using markdown pipes for delimiters instead of commas

Close out the If

An example with For Loops might be Interfaces or Neighbors but the rest of the syntax and structure is the same

Now because there are multiple interfaces I need to loop or iterate over each interface.

Now add the row of data

Note you can include “In-line” If statements to check if a variable is defined. Some interfaces might not have a Description for example. Test if it is defined first, and if not (else) use a default of “No Description”

Other fields are imperative and do not need to be tested.

Close the Loop

Now do the markdown headers for Interfaces

Then the For Loop again and data row again but using pipes

Then close out the If statement

Complete the remaining templates. Save everything and Git commit / push up to your repo.

Cooking Time

Lets run the playbook against two fully-loaded production Nexus 7000s using the Linux time command

Two minutes in the oven !

Results

Some samples of the output.

First the Nice JSON – note the lists have been collapsed to be brief but any of the lists can be expanded in VS Code for the details

Interfaces

Neighbors

Now some prefer YAML to JSON so we have the exact same data but in YAML format as well

Now the above is already incredible but I wouldn’t call JSON and YAML files “business-ready” – for that we need a spreadsheet!

The real tasty stuff are the CSV files!

The general facts

Interfaces

Note that you can filter these csv files directly in VS Code – here I have applied a filter on all interfaces without a description

This captures all types of interfaces

Including SVIs

The Markdown provides a quickly rendered VS Code or browser experience

And the Interactive HTML is pretty neat!

Now remember we have all of these file types for all of the various facts these are just a few samples I like to hand out to the audience – for the full blown experience you can hopefully follow this recipe and cook your own Cisco NXOS Ansible Facts playbook!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-72.png

Please reach out if you need any additional tips or advice ! I can be reached here or on my social media platforms.

Collaboration is the key to automation success – A Genie Success Story

I’ve been on about a three year journey with network automation and while I have had great personal and technical success – my organization and most of those outside my immediate day-to-day circle are still shackled to the ‘old’ way of doing things (primarily the CLI).

This year I decided to start a new program – a training session for those outside of my small development team – primarily targeted at the “operations” staff who can benefit the most from automation and infrastructure as code. This includes network operators, monitoring / NOC team members, IT Security staff, other developers, compute (server / storage) teams; everybody is welcome. We divided the calendar up into different teams with different recurring timeslots.

In advance I had written and tested a bunch of Code for the Campus Core – Ansible Facts and Genie parsed show commands – transforming the output into business-ready documentation. My plan was simple enough:

1. Ensure everybody was on the same page and had the same toolkit
* VS Code
* Git
* Azure DevOps repository bookmarked
* Various VS Code extensions
* A basic overview of main vs working branches in Git
* A basic outline on Ansible, YAML, Jinja2, and JSON

2. An operator would create a working development branch – in our case the Distribution Layer – so dist_facts Git branch.
* This operator ‘drives’ the whole session sharing their screen
* Step by step, line by line, refactoring (fancy way of saying copy-pasting) working code from the Core and updating it for the Distribution Layer as necessary
* Git clone, add, commit, push, and pull performed in both VS Code and Linux CLI
* Ansible playbook executed with a –limit against one building, then at scale after validating output
* Thorough tour of the JSON, YAML, CSV, MD, and HTML files after each run

3. Work through Ansible Facts and various Genie parsed commands to build up a source of truth

So far it has been a very successful approach with the two teams adopting Marvel superhero teams (TEAM: CAPTAIN AMERICA and TEAM: IRON MAN respectively) allowing me to create memes like this:

Image

Anyway – back to the point – today we had the following exchange:

Me: “So – we just parsed the show etherchannel summary CLI command and transformed the output into CSV files – amazing right! Any questions?”

Operator catching on quickly: “We use the show interfaces trunk command often to track down what VLANs are being carried on which interfaces – can we transform that into a CSV?”

Me, excited and proud of the Operator: “Amazing question and I’m glad you brought up a practical example of a command you use in the field all the time we can maybe transform into something a little more useful than CLI output!

Launch the Genie parser search engine (under available parsers on the left menu) and let’s see if there is a parser available

Bingo! Let’s do it!”

The playbook

In this example we are targeting the Campus Core.

The playbook is simple enough

Use the Ansible ios_command module to issue and register the show interfaces trunk command

Next, using the Genie filter plugin

Filter the raw variable and register a new variable with the Genie parsed results

Note you need to pass the parse_genie filter two arguments the command itself and the appropriate Cisco operating system

Next I like to create a Nice JSON and Nice YAML file with the parsed results as follows:

Which look like this:

And this:

I then use a loop to create a CSV and MD file from a Jinja2 template

The Jinja2 Template looks like this

Couple things to hightlight:

* We challenge the current iteration of the Ansible loop and when it is on “csv” we template a CSV file format otherwise (else) it will be “md” and we template a markdown file
* The For Loop is over each interface in the results
* Be careful with the CSV file you need to regex_replace the comma out of results because they are comma-separated which will throw off your CSV file. The markdown does not require any regex.

Which results in this amazing sortable, searchable, filterable, version controller, source controller, truthful, fact-based CSV file:

Now this example is just the singular logical Core but we will quickly refactor the code next week in our next session together and the operator who wanted this playbook will get a chance to write it ! Then we will have the interface trunk information for the entire campus automatically in spreadsheets!

The moral of this story is to collaborate. Ask your front-line operators how automation can help them. Do they have any frequently used or highly valuable CLI Commands they want transformed into CSV format? Would Ansible facts help them? And then show them how to do it so they can start writing these playbooks for themselves.

My current toolkit

“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
― Marshall McLuhan

My first attempt at network automation I used the tools that I had used to manage infrastructure with for the past 20+ years. A file editor (notepad) and a file transfer program (WinSCP) on my Windows 10 machine and a Linux (CentOS (at the office) / Ubuntu (at home)) machine. Ansible was the first new tool introduced to me and every other tool here has followed to either support my Ansible development or I was led down the path to discovery because of Ansible. So – installed Ansible on the Linux environment at the office and made sure it had SSH connectivity to my in-band management network.

Ready to go! I had everything I needed to write YAML files and make my playbooks, group / host variable files, and inventory file. I could either write these in Notepad in Windows and transfer them to Linux or just “vi” them directly on Linux. All set right?

As a beginner trying to orchestrate a series of serially executed commands in Ansible playbook tasks I was suffering from a mix of ignorance and arrogance. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And while yes, my playbook would eventually go onto be successful and make a large scale, complex, change across multiple devices without causing an outage of any kind, the process was brutal. Back and forth trial and error with all of these, what turned out to be, unnecessary steps of trying to track my latest version of working code across my development environments.

Shameful filenames like “John_Working_Code_v2_latest_new02.yml” were sprawling out of control and I was starting to feel like a “The Price is Right” contestant where they guess the value of 5 items, pull a lever to see how many they got right, then run back and guess again and try to figure out which ones were correct, then run back and pull the lever again.

Eventually I got all 5 items priced correctly but it was a lot of panic-driven, chaotic, running around, as it turns out, for no reason.

Was there a better way? Surely this isn’t what people mean when they say DevOps or infrastructure as code or network automation. Why would anyone do it this way? It doesn’t scale. It took weeks longer than had I just logged into each router at the CLI and configured the device manually by hand.

Ansible wasn’t that hard – but the tools I was using were simply wrong. Enter the modern toolkit.

TL:DR

– This toolkit took about three years to put together through a lot of hard work and discovery.
– Tools make all the difference.
– You need an Integrated Development Environment (IDE).
– Version and source control are good things. They are not just middle management talk.
– Network automation means treating infrastructure as code.
– You have crossed over from IT into Development; act accordingly.
– Use software development tools to solve software development problems.
– Git. Git. Git. Git. Git. Git.
– Powerful stuff.
– Leads to Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) in the long run.
– Both for configuration management as well as state capture, validation, and testing.

Version / Source Control – Git

I start with Git because in order of software installation Git should come first. You want to build up a development environment in order to work with infrastructure as code and you want to have both version (current, working, code; previous working code; testing new things without affecting old working things) and source (source of truth, which copy is the master copy / primary copy / main copy, allow for distributed development) controls (like RBAC but over your code base). For Windows you need to download and install Git (first, before your IDE so Git can be integrated when you install your IDE). But for Linux Git comes pre-installed as a standard.

Git vs GitHub

Git is not GitHub and GitHub is not Git.

Git is the actual software that does the version and source control. Git creates a hidden .git folder that tracks changes inside that Git-enabled folder. Git has commands used to work with code.

GitHub is an online Git repository. The largest collection of code in the universe GitHub provides a free place to store Git repositories (the folder with the .git subfolder tracking all artifacts within the parent folder). GitHub, or other Git hosting repository sites or services, provides the source control over your infrastructure as code.

Git is used to clone Git repositories (GitHub or other Git repository hosting site) locally, that is take a full copy of the remote repository locally, where developers can make changes and then push those changes back into the remote repository.

Branching

Git uses branching as it’s version control system. A main branch (previously and sometimes still referred to as master) serves as the known-good, stable, current, source of truth, intent; the master copy of a key for example.

A branch, another full copy of the code with a different identifier from main/master, can be created for development purposes. Bug fixes, feature releases, scaling, or routine changes can be done within a branch, protecting the main branch, and once tested and QA has been performed, the branch is merged through a mechanism known as a pull request, back into main, updating main’s artifacts accordingly.

It might not seem obvious at first but in larger distributed development environments the pull request system allows for cross-team orchestration and collaboration. Pull requests can require approvals and reviews and can then also be used to trigger software builds and releases. The ever evolving history of a piece of infrastructure is completely documented and tracked in the pull request history handling the entire lifecycle of any given product, platform, or host.

My favourite Git-related sites:

Learn Git Branching

Oh Shit Git!

IDE – VS Code

I love VS Code. I really do. After Git is installed download and install VS Code. VS Code is where you will be writing all of your code and reviewing the artifacts your code generates. It is fully Git integrated and aware and things like Git clone, Git add, Git commit, and Git push are all simply point-and-click operations. Split-screen editing, syntax checking, and a vast library of extensions make VS Code my number one pick for an IDE.

VS Code Extensions

Extensions are plug-ins you can install to further enhance VS Code’s already awesome capabilities. There are thousands of extensions available out there. Here is my VS Code extension list that I find helps enhance my infrastructure as code development experience.

My favourite extension:

GitLens

Development Services – Microsoft AzureDevOps

Formerly Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS), AzureDevOps provides development services for distributed development teams in the form of work boards (KANBAN; other Agile systems; waterfall), Git repositories, software builds, tests, and software releases allowing for full CI/CD DevOps.

ADO has the advantage, for me, as being an on-prem / private cloud solution with full enterprise controls (RBAC; AD integration) and feature sets.

Git repositories can transition to SSH key authentication. Docker container images can be build and deployed based on Git triggers and actions which build and deploy Ansible playbooks automatically.

Rich history, version and source controls, and an amazing collaboration space – particularly around Git Pull Requests – which fully enable and charge up infrastructure as code development. Adapt and adopt Agile practices to infrastructure teams.

Docker Integration

Moving towards infrastructure as code and full CI/CD in AzureDevOps Docker has become a very important tool and a key component of my success in DevOps. A Docker container image can be thought of as an immutable CD-ROM/DVD-like ISO (hence the “image” part) which can run, self-contained and without the need for a full blown hypervisor like VMWare or Hyper-V, an operating system and software inside of it. Docker images can be interactive and you can “log into” / shell into them, but any changes made inside this session are discarded when the session ends. Ansible and pyATS can both be “containerized” and run inside Docker container images.

Why is this important?

It allows me to setup a software build (create a Docker container image based on a specified Dockerfile) and software release in AzureDevOps CI/CD pipeline. Now any Ansible playbook or pyATS test I previously scheduled with a human operator executing the automation to fully automated and human-independent CI/CD that is trigger based on Git actions like Pull Requests.

A quick approach to Docker:

– Make it work at the CLI.
– Wrap this / convert this to Ansible playbook.
– Wrap the Ansible playbook in Docker.
– Build and release Docker image based on Git actions that trigger the CI/CD.

A sample infrastructure as code build:

And the matching release:

With detailed logs showing the Ansible playbook and Docker status.

Automation Tool – Ansible

After discovering Ansible in April of 2017 my entire approach to solving infrastructure problems changed. Now I work with an automate-first principal and nearly every solution I’ve developed in the past three years has been an Ansible playbook of some kind. It really has been a one-size-fits-all tool for me. Cisco, Microsoft, Linux, VMWare, Azure, anything with a RESTful API; Ansible has done it all for me.

My key points about Ansible:

– Simple, powerful, agentless.
– No previous coding skills required. This is not like learning Python from scratch.
– Can be used for anything from gathering facts, tactical one-time changes at scale, or full configuration management.

My full AnsibleFest 2020 deck if you want to dive deeper.

Ansible-related file types – YAML, JSON, Jinja2

The loaded term “infrastructure as code” or even “network automation” really boils down to the fact that you will be working with a few new file types to create artifacts like data models, templates and playbooks.

YAML Ain’t Markup Language (YAML)

YAML is a human readable data serialization language. In terms of Ansible both your data models (infrastructure represented as intent-based code) and playbooks (the file containing the serially executed tasks to perform) will be YAML files.

A data model for a switch might look like this:

As you can see the file format is simple, made up of lists of key-value pairs, and very human readable. This represents the intent for this particular device.

A playbook, on the other hand, might look like this:

This playbook is scoped for the CampusAccess group in the Ansible hosts inventory file. Prompts for username and password and then runs the ios_facts module printing the gathered facts on the screen.

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)

You may not need to write JSON but you should be able to consume JSON if you are working with Ansible. All Ansible facts, for example, are represented in JSON. This is much like a RESTful API that returns JSON in response to an HTTP GET. You may need to write JSON if you are POST / PUT (creating / updating) records with an API as the body of the HTTP POST / PUT will be JSON data.

Ansible facts get returned by default like this as an example of an Ansible-related JSON artifact:

Jinja2

Jinja2 is Ansible’s (and Python’s) templating language. Saved as .j2 files, a Jinja template is exactly that – a template of another file type. Configuration stanzas, JSON, YAML, CSV, markdown, HTML, plain-text; more or less anything can be templated with Jinja2.

Logic is often applied inside a Jinja2 template such as For Loops or If Else End If declarations. Jinja2 also allows for the use of variables – which reference the original data model examples.

The VLANs from the data model of example could be templated for Cisco IOS as follows:

{% for vlan in host_vlans %}
vlan {{ vlan }}
name {{ host_vlans[vlan].name }}
{% endfor %}

I have written many more Cisco IOS Jinja2 templates you can check out.

Automated Documentation with Ansible filters – RAW JSON, Nice JSON, Nice YAML, CSV, Markdown, and Interactive HTML Mind Maps

Probably my favourite, and often overlooked, Ansible capability is to generate automated network and infrastructure state documentation. I do this with Ansible filters. Starting with this simple playbook:

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-17.png

The Ansible magic variable – ansible_facts can be transformed. To simply take the RAW JSON inside ansible_facts you can use the Ansible copy module to copy them into a file:

But using Ansible filters – adding | and then the filter, the ugly RAW JSON can be transformed into “nice” human readable JSON:

Or even better – Nice YAML!

Which looks like this:

CSV and Markdown files can also be created using the ansible_facts JSON and another filter, JSON_Query, an SQL-like query tool used against JSON.

So we set_facts (create our own variables) from the parsed JSON:

Which we can then use to make CSV:

Or Markdown:

Mark Map

Mark Map is a nifty little program that converts any valid, well-formed Markdown file into an interactive HTML “mind map”.

You need to have node.js and npm installed in the Linux environment.

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash –

Then simply run the one line command referencing the markdown file you want to convert to a mind map.

npx markmap-cli <filename>

The output, which is fully interactive, looks like this:

Ansible Vault

A big part of moving to CI/CD and automated builds and releases from human-driven automation is securing the credentials used to authenticate against any given infrastructure. As all of the infrastructure as code is in a central Git repository you don’t want to store your credentials in plain / clear text. One approach is to use prompted mechanisms for securely handling credentials but this does not lend itself to full autonomous automation in Docker containers.

Ansible Vault provides a way to encrypt full files or in our case specific variables, such as the credentials key-value. Once vaulted the encrypted variable can then be safely stored inside the Ansible group_vars file inside the Git repo for all to see. The matching password to unlock the variable can be provided at runtime (again counter intuitive) or, and this is my approach, saved in plaintext in a file in a secure location on the Linux host.

The magic happens at Docker container image runtime where the password file is mounted as a volume into the Docker image so the Ansible playbook can dynamically unlock the credential variables at runtime. Because the lock and key are separate this is a very secure way to automate Ansible with Docker safely.

To move from something like this, that uses prompted inputs from a human operator

Vaulted variables that can be run non-interactively

Use the Ansible Vault mechanism.

$ ansible-vault encrypt_string ‘string’ –name ‘variable_name’

Where ‘string’ is your enable secret for a Cisco IOS for example.

$ ansible-vault encrypt_string ‘My$ecretKey1’ –name ‘ansible_ssh_pass’
New Vault password: <A Strong Encryption password here>
Confirm New Vault password: <Repeat Strong Encryption password here>

Now you can replace the ansible_ssh_pass variable with the vaulted password.

To make it fully non-interactive save your Vault password ( <A Strong Encryption password here>) to a plain-text file (yes it seems counter intuitive but this is fine and safe) saved somewhere secure on the Linux host.

sudo vi /etc/secrets/AnsibleVault.txt
< A Strong Encryption password here >

(ESC, wq! )

Then, in your ansible.cfg file stored in the same location as the playbooks add the following line under [defaults]

[defaults]
vault_password_file: /etc/secrets/AnsibleVault.txt

The playbook will now securely and automatically authenticate without the need for prompts or for insecurely saving naked credentials in the clear.

Latest tool – Application Programmable Interfaces (APIs) for Infrastructure

APIs have finally arrived for infrastructure in the form of RESTful interfaces on switches and routers, on the Cisco Catalyst 9000 series for example, and other appliances and web services. I have had great success with F5’s AS3 API. Cisco.com has amazing APIs. Cisco Prime Infrastructure and Cisco Identity Services Engine APIs are extremely capable and easy to use. BlueCat Address Manager has an API. They are popping up everywhere!

Command Line Interface: cURL

Client Uniform Resource Locator (cURL) is a command-line tool used to interact with an API. As of May 2018 cURL is even included in Windows by default.

Try it yourself – launch a command prompt (Start -> Run; cmd) and type in:

curl https://quotes.rest/qod

You should get back a Quote of the Day in JSON from the public open RESTful API:

Graphical User Interface: Postman

Postman is a GUI API client. Postman can be used for quick and simply API interactions but is also a very powerful API automation and development tool that should not be dismissed as just a simple API browser.

The same Quote of the API would look like this in Postman:

Automation: Ansible URI Module

Ansible has a universal module, the URI module, that allows for API automation. The follow Ansible playbook, quoteoftheday.yml, can be created to automate the Quote of the Day.

Using additional Ansible tools the JSON can be manipulated to create usable reports from the JSON.

The Quote of the Day playbook is available on Automate Your Network’s GitHub.

Quote of the Day API
https://github.com/automateyournetwork/QotD
0 forks.
3 stars.
0 open issues.

Recent commits:

State Validation: Cisco Testing Automation Solution (CTAS)

The Cisco Testing Automation Solution (CTAS) is actually three distinct tool kits assembled in a pyramid / hierarchy.

Siming Yuan blog 3

The foundation here is parsing. Using the Genie library framework various infrastructure CLI commands are parsed and transformed into JSON output. From there pyATS can run automated boolean tests against the Genie parsed returned key-value pairs. xPresso is a GUI based ecosystem that provides for RBAC, scheduling, and much more advanced and easy to build testing workflows.

Similar to Ansible which has connection strings inside group variables CTAS uses testbed files which describe and provide shell connectivity to run the parsing and testing.

A sample testbed file for a Cisco ISR. Note the password is encrypted using pyATS cryptography methods.

A sample crc_errors pyATS test file, written in Python. This test could be used with the ISR testbed to check for CRC errors on all interfaces.

A sample log, taken from an AzureDevOps CI/CD release inside a Docker container image:

xPresso also offers the automation and orchestration capabilities:

Summary

Over the past three years my toolkit as a network engineer has grown dramatically from a humble text editor and a file transfer program to dozens of new tools each with their own amazing capabilities. In short – go get these tools and start using them to solve problems.

– Git
– VS Code
– VS Code Extensions
– GitHub account and repositories for public use
– AzureDevOps for Enterprise use
– Linux of any flavour
– Ansible
– Python
– Docker
– Postman
– cURL
– Ansible URI module
– YAML experience
– JSON experience
– Jinja2 templating experience
– Markdown experience
– HTML experience
– Mind map transformations
– Genie parsers
– pyATS
– xPresso

I am always open to questions, comments, or feedback if you need help getting started!

Downloading the tools and exploring yourself is the best way to get started but I’m here to help!

Just the facts ma’am

Infrastructure as Code and Network Automation – Where to Start

Learning any new skill takes time, patience, a willingness to try and fail, and ideally continuously learn and grow from our mistakes until we grow more and more proficient. The number one question I get is “How do you get started?”. I got started the hard way – trying to automate a tactical, one-time, unique, complicated, large-scale problem out of necessity with little time to learn the best way to approach such a problem. This post is to provide you with safe, easy, valuable, scalable, Ansible playbooks you can copy, study, and modify to fit your infrastructure. I want to stress that the following code does not attempt to change, modify, add, remove, update, or delete any data or configurations. They simply connect, securely, to a target host or set of hosts, capture stateful facts, that is to say, truthful key-value pairs and lists of information about the current state or configuration, parse those facts, and then transform them into useable, human-readable, automated documentation.

TL:DR

– Documenting enterprise networks and servers is tedious work at best.
– Most enterprise documentation is, for a lack of a better word, wanting, if it exists at all.
– Various Ansible modules can be used to gather stateful, truthful, facts from infrastructure.
– Not limited to network devices. Windows, Linux, VMWare provide facts to Ansible as well.
– Easy.
– After you capture facts they are easily transformed into automated state documentation.
– RAW JSON, Nice JSON, Nice YAML, CSV (spreadsheets!), Markdown, and interactive HTML mind maps from Ansible facts.
– Scales n+x devices.
– Safe, secure, no possibility of disrupting the network. Think of it as running a bunch of show commands or doing HTTP GETs.
– Loved by management everywhere.

Enter: Ansible

If you are familiar with me at all you likely already know Ansible is my automation tool of choice. If you are new around here – let me tell you why. I believe Ansible is so easy that I can write a simple blog post with a few lines of code that you should be able to reproduce and make it work for you. There is little to no barrier to entry and your solution complexity will scale along with your personal growth and muscle memory with the tool. So let’s get started.

Linux

You are going to need a Linux environment. If you are a traditional Windows user who may not have access to a RHEL, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, or other Linux platform you can use the Windows Subsystems for Linux (WSL2) on Windows 10 to run a Linux environment.

For example to install Ubuntu on Windows 10:

Right-click the Windows Start icon – select Apps and Features.

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In the Apps and Features window – click Programs and Features under Related Settings on the right side of Apps and Features.

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Click Turn Windows Features On or Off in the left (with the shield icon) side of the Programs and Features window.

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Scroll to bottom of the Features window and put a check mark beside Windows Subsytem for Linux; Click Ok and close the open windows.

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Launch the Microsoft Store.

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Search for Ubuntu – click the first result.

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Click Install.

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Wait for Ubuntu to install.

Press Windows Key and start typing Ubuntu – click and launch Ubuntu.

The first time Ubuntu launches it has to setup – give this some time.

Enter your username and password for Ubuntu.

Update Ubuntu – this step will take some time.

$ sudo apt update

$ sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Install Ansible

Make sure Python is installed.

$ sudo apt-get install python -y

Install Ansible.

$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ansible/ansible

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install ansible -y

hosts

You will need a hosts file. This is the foundation for a good, scalable, modular Ansible install base. Hosts can be organized hierarchically to match your physical or logical topologies. The machine hosting Linux must be able to resolve the hosts if you use their hostname and have IP connectivity for the playbooks to work. For a standard Cisco enterprise design you might have a hosts file like this:

[ENTERPRISE:children]
CAMPUS
WAN

[CAMPUS:children]
CORE
DIST
ACCESS

[CORE]
core.my.domain.com

[DIST]
dist01.my.domain.com
dist02.my.domain.com

[ACCESS]
access01.my.domain.com
access02.my.domain.com
access03.my.domain.com

[WAN]
wan_router01.my.domain.com
wan_router02.my.domain.com

Connectivity

Ansible needs to be able to securely connect to the targeted host. There are no agents and Ansible uses SSH, WinRM, or HTTPS as transport protocols. For most devices a username and password are required to authenticate and authorize the Ansible session. There are a few ways that this can be handled but for beginner’s I would setup a prompted mechanism to get going. Eventually you can learn about Ansible Vault but to avoid hard coding plain-text passwords to get started, a mistake even I made when I was beginning to use Ansible, start with prompted interactive playbooks where a human has to enter a username and password.

These connections strings are first setup in what’s known a group variable or group_vars where all of the individual hosts in a group (ie dist01 and dist02 in DIST group) inherit the variables set. Because we have everything nested in [ENTERPRISE], in a folder called group_vars, create the following file.

ENTERPRISE.yml

ansible_connection: network_cli
ansible_network_os: ios
ansible_user: “{{ hostvars[inventory_hostname][‘ios_password’] }}”
ansible_ssh_pass: “{{ hostvars[inventory_hostname][‘ios_password’] }}”

This tells all the hosts in the Enterprise hosts group to use the Ansible network_cli connection mechanism; that the target operating system is Cisco IOS; and that the Ansible user and Ansible passwords are variables.

Playbooks

At the heart of Ansible are playbooks. Playbooks are YAML files made up of key-value pairs and lists of serially executed tasks. The first step in the playbook is to establish the scope of the playbook tasks from either a group or single host in the hosts file or locally using the localhost option. For this example target the Campus Access layer. One of the tasks in these facts playbooks will either call a specific facts module (like ios_facts), use the setup module, or target an API using the uri module. But first, we have to prompt the user for their credentials and store them in variables to be used by the Ansible connection strings in the group vars files.

Create a file called CiscoAccessFacts.yml inside the playbooks folder as follows:

– hosts: ACCESS

vars_prompt:
– name: ios_user_prompt
prompt: “Enter Cisco IOS Username”
private: no

– name: ios_password_prompt
prompt: “Enter IOS Password”
private: yes

tasks:
– set_fact:
ios_user: “{{ ios_user_prompt }}”
ios_password: “{{ ios_password_prompt }}”
no_log: true
delegate_to: localhost
run_once: true

Now that we have connection to our devices in the ACCESS group using the prompted credentials which are passed to the group_vars Ansible connection strings we are ready to perform the actual IOS Facts Ansible task as follows:

– name: Gather Ansible IOS Facts
ios_facts:
gather_subset:
– all

That’s it! Now we have captured the Ansible IOS Facts. Because these are Ansible facts we do not need to register them as a variable; they are stored in the ansible_facts magic variable.

To print your facts to the screen you can use the Ansible debug with the following message as the next task in your playbook:

– debug:
msg=”{{ ansible_facts }}”

Save and run the file.

ansible-playbook CiscoAccessFacts.yml

Answer the prompts for credentials. After authenticating and gathering the facts something like this should be displayed on the screen, except with actual data values completed.

Cisco NXOS_Facts

Much like IOS, Ansible has an NXOS fact module as well. The NXOS module, as expected, provides the same baseline facts as IOS but adds hardware facts such as modules, fans, and power supplies as well as software facts such as features, licensing, and VLANS.

Copy the Campus files and update them accordingly. Typically in a data center where the NXOS facts will gather there is HA configured and paired-devices. These playbooks have been tested on Nexus 9000, Nexus 7000, Nexus 5000, and Nexus 2000 FEX modules.

hosts
[DC_CORE]
DC_CORE01
DC_CORE02

[DC_ACCESS]
DC_ACCESS01
DC_ACCESS02
DC_ACCESS03
DC_ACCESS04

group_vars\DC_ACCESS.yml

ansible_connection: network_cli
ansible_network_os: nxos
ansible_user: “{{hostvars[inventory_hostname][‘nxos_user’]}}”
ansible_ssh_pass: “{{hostvars[inventory_hostname][‘nxos_password’]}}”

Notice the change to nxos for the ansible_network_os. The variables are changed for cosmetics as well to match the NXOS platform.

playbooks\CiscoNXOSAccessFacts.yml

– hosts: DC_ACCESS

vars_prompt:
– name: nxos_user_prompt
prompt: “Enter Cisco NXOS Username”
private: no

– name: nxos_password_prompt
prompt: “Enter NXOS Password”
private: yes

tasks:
– set_fact:
nxos_user: “{{ nxos_user_prompt }}”
nxos_password: “{{ nxos_password_prompt }}”
no_log: true
delegate_to: localhost
run_once: true

– name: Gather Ansible NXOS Facts about DC Access
nxos_facts:
gather_subset:
-all

– debug:
msg=”{{ ansible_facts }}”

Save and run the playbook.

ansible-playbook CiscoNXOSAccessFacts.yml

Review the output on the screen and notice the new sets of facts only NXOS can provide.

Notice again the change from ios_facts to nxos_facts but that’s about it. Now you have all of your Data Centre Ansible Facts as well as your Campus!

This is great right? What other facts can we get? How about compute facts! Yes that’s right we can use Ansible to get Windows, Linux, and VMWare (bare metal or virtual guest) facts too using more or less the same steps.

Compute Facts

Ansible is not limited to gathering facts from Cisco or other network devices. In fact Ansible can be used to gather even more facts from compute platforms like Microsoft Windows, Linux of any flavour, and VMWare (both bare metal hosts and virtual guests).

Microsoft Windows Facts

That’s right. We can use Ansible, a Linux-only tool, to gather Microsoft Windows facts! More or less the same approach and building blocks are the same; a hosts file, group vars file, and playbook. Windows hosts, like Cisco hosts, can be logically organized anyway you see fit. Windows hosts can be grouped by product line, OS, function, location, or other values. For now create a simple hosts file with one parent group called Windows.

The requirements and WinRM installation and configuration guide can be found here. Either HTTP or HTTPS can be used because Kerberos is ultimately securing the payload, even if the transport is only HTTP.

hosts
[Windows]
Server01
Server02

The group vars Ansible connectivity variables for Microsoft Windows are as follows:

group_vars\Windows.yml

ansible_user: “{{hostvars[inventory_hostname][‘windows_user’]}}”
ansible_password: “{{hostvars[inventory_hostname][‘windows_password’]}}”
ansible_winrm_scheme: http
ansible_port: 5985
ansible_connection: winrm
ansible_winrm_transport: kerberos

Note the Ansible WinRM scheme needs to be setup as either HTTP or HTTPS and the corresponding Ansible port (5985 for HTTP; 5986 for HTTPS) needs to be selected depending on the transport protocol. Ansible connection is using WinRM and the WinRM transport is specified as Kerberos.

Now in the playbook target the Windows group of hosts and use the same prompted mechanism code as before updating it to reflect Windows cosmetically. The only change to the Facts task is to change from the ios or nxos facts module to the setup module.

– name: Gather Ansible Windows Facts about Windows hosts
setup:
gather_subset:
-all

– debug:
msg=”{{ ansible_facts }}”

Save the playbook as playbooks/WindowsFacts.yml and run the playbook.

ansible-playbook WindowsFacts.yml

Notice all of the amazing facts Ansible can discover about a Windows host or groups of Windows hosts.

Linux Facts

The great thing about the setup module is that it can be used against Windows and Linux hosts. Meaning you simply need to clone the Windows artifacts (group_vars file, playbook, and hosts inventory) and refactor all of the Windows references to Linux (Linux.yml group var file; [Linux] hosts list; Windows to Linux cosmetic references) but the core Ansible task remains the same:

– name: Gather Ansible Linux Facts about Linux hosts
setup:
gather_subset:
-all

– debug:
msg=”{{ ansible_facts }}”

However, much like IOS vs NXOS facts, the amount of Linux facts eclipses even the huge list of facts from the Windows hosts. This is due to the native Ansible / Linux coupling and support.

VMWare

VMWare does not use the generic setup module and has a specific facts module like Cisco IOS or NXOS. VMWare facts actually use the downstream VSphere API and there are 2 additional required fields in addition to an authorized username and password; hostname and esxi_hostname. This module, vmware_host_facts gathers facts about the bare metal hosts; not the virtual guests. From my testing I found it best to target the hostname and esxi_hostname using the esxi hostname in the Ansible hosts inventory file.

– name: Gather vmware host facts
vmware_host_facts:
username: “{{ vmware_user }}”
password: “{{ vmware_password }}”
hostname: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”
esxi_hostname: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

– debug:
msg=”{{ ansible_facts }}”

Very rich JSON similar to that of Linux are provided back including all hardware information about virtual NICs, VMWare datastores, BIOS, and processors.

Microsoft Azure

Even clouds have Ansible Facts! Azure Facts are actually even easier to retrieve because of the simplified authentication mechanism. Username and password still works or you could setup Service Principal Credentials. Inside Azure you need to create an account with at least API read-only permissions. There are some prerequisites to install. First pip install the Ansible Azure libraries.

$ pip install ‘ansible[azure]’

You can create the following file $HOME/.azure/credentials to pass credentials to the various Azure modules without username and password prompts or credential handling.

[default]
subscription_id=xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
client_id=xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
secret=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
tenant=xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

In the list of Ansible cloud modules find the Azure section. Each Azure module has two components – a config module and an info (facts) module.

Using the same process, along with JSON_Query, and a with_together loop, for example, capture all Azure Virtual Network info. First we have to capture the Azure resource groups and then pass the resource group along to a second API to get the associated networks.

– name: Get Azure Facts for Resource Groups
azure_rm_resourcegroup_info:
register: azure_resource_groups

– name: Get Azure Facts for all Networks within all Resource Groups
azure_rm_virtualnetwork_info:
resource_group: “{{ item.0 }}”
register: azure_virtual_network
with_together:
– “{{ azure_resource_groups | json_query(‘resourcegroups[*].name’) }}”

Ok great. So what? What can I do with these facts?

So far we have simply dumped the facts to console to explore the various modules. What I like to do with these facts is to create living, automated, stateful, truthful, human-readable, management and operations loves me for it, documentation. With a little work and changing the playbooks from interactive on-demand playbooks to non-interactive fully scheduled and automatically executed periodically these playbooks can now run all by themselves creating snapshots of state in the form of reports.

First I like to capture the RAW JSON as a forensic artifact. The raw facts unchanged and unfiltered, in case audit, compliance, security, or other possible downstream machine code that requires unchanged RAW JSON.

This is easily done in Ansible using the copy module. We have the RAW JSON in a variable, the Ansible magic variable {{ ansible_facts }}, we just need to copy it into a file.

We will need a repository for the new output files so create a documentation folder structure with subfolders for your various platforms.

Add the following line of code, customizing the output file name based on the playbook environment, after the debug. For example the IOS Access Facts playbook.

The Ansible magic variable {{ inventory_hostname }} can be used to reference the current iterated inventory host file target which we will use to identify the parent switch for each of the facts.

– name: Create RAW JSON file
copy:
content: |
{{ ansible_facts }}
dest: ../documentation/FACTS/CAMPUS/ACCESS/{{inventory_hostname}}_IOS_Facts_RAW.json

Save and re-run the playbook. All the IOS facts will now be, albeit ugly and unusable, stored in a RAW JSON file.

to_nice filters

Ansible has various filters that can be used to help parse or transform data. Using two of these filters, to_nice_json and to_nice_yaml, we can create human-readable, nice, pretty, and easy to consume JSON and YAML files.

Simply copy and paste the Create RAW JSON file task and modify the new stanzas as follows:

– name: Create Nice JSON file
copy:
content: |
{{ ansible_facts | to_nice_json }}
dest: ../documentation/FACTS/CAMPUS/ACCESS/{{inventory_hostname}}_IOS_Facts_Nice.json

– name: Create Nice YAML file
copy:
content: |
{{ ansible_facts | to_nice_yaml }}
dest: ../documentation/FACTS/CAMPUS/ACCESS/{{inventory_hostname}}_IOS_Facts.yml

Save and re-run the playbook. Now you should have 2 human readable files. The _Nice.json (displayed in the first screenshot) file and now an even easier to read YAML file:

Traditional Reports from Facts

While the RAW and Nice JSON and YAML files are great for programming, data modeling, logic, templating, and other infrastructure as code purposes they are still not exactly consumable by a wider audience (management; operations; monitoring; capacity planning). Using Ansible’s ability to parse the registered variable JSON and another filter, JSON_Query, an SQL-like tool used to query and parse JSON, we can capture individual fields and place them into CSV or markdown ordered structure.

First we are going to use Ansible’s set_facts module to create our own variables out of the key-value pair and lists in JSON which we can then re-use to create reports.

For IOS Access Facts set the following facts:

– name: Set Facts
set_fact:
image: “{{ ansible_facts[‘net_image’] }}”
version: “{{ ansible_facts[‘net_version’] }}”
serial: “{{ ansible_facts[‘net_serialnum’] }}”
model: “{{ ansible_facts[‘net_model’] }}”
ip_addresses: “{{ ansible_facts[‘net_all_ipv4_addresses’] }}”
disk_total: “{{ ansible_facts | json_query(‘net_filesystems_info.bootdisk.spacetotal_kb’) }} “
disk_free: “{{ ansible_facts | json_query(‘net_filesystems_info.bootdisk.spacefree_kb’) }}”

CSV

Now that we have set our own facts / variables from the JSON facts we simply put them into order to create a CSV file.

– name: Create Cisco IOS Access Facts CSV
copy:
content: |
{{ inventory_hostname }},{{ image }},{{ version }},{{ serial }},{{ model }},{{ disk_total }},{{ disk_free }}
dest: ../documentation/FACTS/CAMPUS/ACCESS/{{ inventory_hostname }}_IOS_facts.csv

Some of the RAW JSON characters need to be cleaned up to pretty up the CSV file. The Ansible replace module can be used in combination with Regular Expression (RegEx) to clean up the file as follows:

– name: Format and cleanup CSV
replace:
path: ../documentation/FACTS/CAMPUS/ACCESS/{{ inventory_hostname }}_IOS_facts.csv
regexp: ‘[|]|”‘
replace: ”

– name: Format and cleanup CSV
replace:
path: ../documentation/FACTS/CAMPUS/ACCESS/{{ inventory_hostname }}_IOS_facts.csv
regexp: “‘”
replace: ”

Now we can add the header row to the CSV using Ansibles lineinfile module.

– name: Header Row
lineinfile:
path: ../documentation/FACTS/CAMPUS/ACCESS/{{ inventory_hostname }}_IOS_facts.csv
insertbefore: BOF
line: Hostname,Image,Version,Serial Number,Model,Total Disk,Free Disk

Save and re-run the playbook. You should now have a CSV file that looks similar to this but with data values in the rows following the header row.

Markdown

Think of markdown as HTML-lite. Markdown reports from facts render nicely in browsers or VS Code with the Markdown Preview extension. More or less the same process as the CSV file place the variables between pipes and create a header row. Markdown has strict rules to make well-formed .md files so pay close attention.

– name: Create Cisco IOS Access Facts Markdown
copy:
content: |
| {{ inventory_hostname }} | {{ image }} | {{ version }} | {{ serial }} | {{ model }} | {{ disk_total }} | {{ disk_free }} |
dest: ../documentation/FACTS/CAMPUS/ACCESS/{{ inventory_hostname }}_IOS_facts.md

(There is more formatting clean up required which you can find in the GitHub repo links at the bottom)

Using the Ansible looping mechanism, with_items, we need to create 3 header rows for the valid markdown file as follows:

– name: Header Row
lineinfile:
path: ../documentation/FACTS/CAMPUS/ACCESS/{{ inventory_hostname }}_IOS_facts.md
insertbefore: BOF
line: “{{ item.property }}”
with_items:
– { property: ‘| ——– | —– | ——- | ————- | —– | ———- | ——— | ‘ }
– { property:’| Hostname | Image | Version | Serial Number | Model | Total Disk | Free Disk |’ }
– { property:’# Cisco IOS Facts for {{ inventory_hostname }}’ }

This generates a mark down file like this:

Mark Map / Interactive HTML Mind Map

Now that we have a well-formed markdown file we can use a relatively new tool to create a relatively new file type. Markmap is a node.js tool that can be used to transform any markdown file into an interactive HTML mind map.

First install the required libraries (node.js and npm)

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash –

Then add the following task after the markdown task.

– name: Generate Cisco IOS Access Facts Mind Map
shell: “npx markmap-cli ../documentation/FACTS/CAMPUS/ACCESS/{{ inventory_hostname }}_IOS_facts.md”
register: markmap

This will generate an interactive HTML page with a mind map of the markdown like this:

Summary

Ansible facts are a great way to get started with network automation and working with infrastructure as code. They are safe, non-intrusive, valuable, and typically management approved playbooks to get you started towards configuration management. They are also a great way to document that enterprise network you’ve been neglecting. Using these simple tools and techniques your full enterprise network, from campus to data centre; cloud to WAN; Cisco to Microsoft to Linux to VMWare to Azure or AWS; can be automatically documented with real time stateful facts!

GitHub Repositories

Here are a collection of Automate Your Network developed GitHub repositories you can use to explore the code or even transform into playbooks customized for your environment.

Cisco IOS Facts

Cisco NXOS Facts

Microsoft Windows Facts

Linux Facts

Cisco Prime Infrastructure Facts