Dell EMC SmartFabric OS10 User Guide Release 10.5.0

Using Ansible

Ansible works by connecting to your nodes using SSH and pushing out small programs, called Ansible modules, to them. Ansible includes hundreds of network modules to support a wide variety of network device vendors. Ansible uses a simple, powerful and agentless automation framework. For more information, go to Network Automation with Ansible.

Dell EMC Networking Ansible solutions

Dell EMC Networking Ansible solutions are based on an open ecosystem that allows organizations to choose from industry-standard network applications, network operating systems, and network hardware. Use Ansible to provision and manage Dell EMC switches for rapid new device deployment and network configuration changes. Ansible also allows you to track running network device configurations against a known baseline for both Dell EMC and third-party operating systems.

Dell EMC Networking Ansible modules

Ansible ships with a number of modules that can be executed directly on remote hosts or through playbooks. The collection of modules is called the module library. Modules are discrete units of code that are used from the command line or in a playbook task. You can also write your own modules.

Dell EMC Networking Ansible roles

Ansible roles allow you to automatically load variable files (vars_files) and tasks based on a known file structure. Grouping content by roles allows the roles to be easily shared with other users. These roles are abstracted for OS6, OS9 and OS10. Download Dell EMC Ansible Networking roles from https://galaxy.ansible.com/.

For information and examples about how to use the Ansible roles, see Dell EMC Networking Repositories.

Ansible inventory file

The inventory file contains the list of hosts on which you want to run commands. Ansible can run tasks on multiple hosts at the same time.

Ansible playbooks use /etc/ansible/hosts as the default inventory file. To specify a different inventory file, use the -i filepath command as an option when you run an Ansible playbook.

Ansible playbook file

Using playbooks, Ansible can configure multiple devices. Playbooks are human-readable scripts that are expressed in YAML format. An Ansible playbook takes inventory and playbook files as arguments and maps the group of hosts in the inventory files to the tasks listed in the playbook file.

Ansible variables

In Ansible, variables define switch configurations. Many Dell EMC switches have common configurations. Common configuration variables are stored in the vars/main.yaml file; for example, dns_server and ntp_server. All host-specific configurations are stored in the host_vars/host_name.yaml configuration file; for example, the hostname of a switch. Variables are also used as part of playbook definitions, command-line arguments, and inventory definitions.