Test Your Ansible Setup - Playbook

Test Your Ansible Setup - Playbook#

A playbook is Ansible’s way of defining configurations, deployments, and orchestrations. It consists of one or more plays, and each play contains a series of tasks. A task is a single action you want Ansible to perform. Here, we’ll create a simple playbook to gather facts from an IOS device and display them using Ansible’s debug module.

Example Playbook#

Here’s a basic playbook:

---
- name: "Playbook-1: Get ios facts"
  hosts: all
  gather_facts: false
  connection: network_cli
  
  tasks:
    - name: "P1T1: Get config from ios_facts"
      ios_facts:
        gather_subset: all

    - name: "P1T2: Display debug message"
      debug:
        msg: "The {{ ansible_net_hostname }} has {{ ansible_net_iostype }} platform"

Understanding the Playbook#

  1. Playbook Definition: Starts with --- to indicate the beginning of a YAML document. A playbook can have one or more plays.

  2. Play Name: “Playbook-1: Get ios facts” helps identify what this play does.

  3. Hosts: hosts: all means this play will run on all hosts listed in your inventory.

  4. Gather Facts: gather_facts: false disables Ansible’s default fact-gathering. Instead, we’ll gather facts using the ios_facts module.

  5. Connection Type: connection: network_cli specifies that we are connecting to network devices using the CLI.

  6. Tasks: Each play has a list of tasks. This play has two tasks:

  • P1T1: Get config from ios_facts: Uses the ios_facts module to gather all facts from the IOS device (gather_subset: all).

  • P1T2: Display debug message: Uses the debug module to show a message with the device’s hostname (ansible_net_hostname) and platform type (ansible_net_iostype).

Running the Playbook#

To run this playbook, ensure your inventory file is correctly set up. Then, run the playbook with this command:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml

Example Output#

When you run the playbook, you might see output like this:

zolo@u22s:~/ansible-networking-lab$ ansible-playbook playbook.yml

PLAY [Playbook-1: Get ios facts] ***************

TASK [P1T1: Get config from ios_facts] *********
ok: [access1]
ok: [access2]
ok: [r1]
ok: [core-sw]

TASK [P1T2: Display debug message] *************
ok: [r1] => {
    "msg": "The r1 has IOS platform"
}
ok: [access1] => {
    "msg": "The access1 has IOS platform"
}
ok: [core-sw] => {
    "msg": "The core-sw has IOS platform"
}
ok: [access2] => {
    "msg": "The access2 has IOS platform"
}

PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************
access1                    : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0
access2                    : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0
core-sw                    : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0
r1                         : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0

This command tells Ansible to execute the playbook (playbook.yml) using your inventory file.

Creating and running a simple Ansible playbook is a powerful way to automate tasks on network devices. This basic playbook gathers facts from an IOS device and displays them, providing a foundation you can build on for more complex automation workflows. Whether you’re managing a small lab or a large production network, Ansible playbooks can help streamline your operations and reduce manual configuration efforts.

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