Ansible Nautobot Demo

Network Importer

This is only a start of the full importing process. It handles information based on the facts that is gathered by Ansible only. For a more full featured Network Importer experience, take a look at the Python/Batfish/Nornir based project Network Importer. The Network Importer project leverages multiple components to get a full set of details to import into Nautobot.

Nautobot

Nautobot is a fork from NetBox 2.10.4 to take the capabilities even further in the network automation space. Take a look at the info on the NTC home page. The same features that have been part of Nautobot are still around and will evolve. If you want to take a test drive of Nautobot, take a look at https://demo.nautobot.com.

Most Recent Updates

I have moved all of the data that was previously configured to be added to Nautobot within the 00_setup_nautobot_devices.yml file to be configured in the all.yml. If looking to bootstrap your Nautobot environment, this is the main information that will need to get updated.

Important Note

This is NOT meant to be run constantly in your environment. Please do not use as such. This is a bootstrapping setup, to get you running. The intent of Nautobot is to become the Source of Truth for your environment. If all you are doing is constantly updating Nautobot from your devices, then the source of truth is the network device, not Nautobot. Please be working to get your environment to the state that you have a Source of Truth that is NOT your device.

Start

To setup Nautobot, checkout https://nautobot.readthedocs.io Setup an API Key in the upper right admin panel Generate an environment of devices to use

Requirements

1. Nautobot Installation
2. Docker Desktop on system
3. If running on Windows, you do not have make. The Makefile is just shortcuts to be used. Take a look at the Makefile for the exact commands that replace the specific make commands.

How to

1. Setup Nautobot (see the beginning)
2. Copy .env.example to .env

cp .env.example .env

3. Update the .env file to match your environment | Variable | Value | | -------- | ----- | | NAUTOBOT_URL | The https://nautobot.example.com url, include any port numbers if not using default port numbers. | | NAUTOBOT_TOKEN | The API token to communicate with Nautobot |
4. Update your group_vars/all.yml, group_vars/ and host_vars/ accordingly with credentials to connect to the devices, see below for example config
5. Create a container - make build
6. Enter the container - make cli
7. Setup Nautobot with executing ansible-playbook 00_setup_nautobot_devices.yml
8. Setup Devices Into Nautobot ansible-playbook 01_setup_devices.yml -i start_inventory replace start_inventory with whatever your static inventory file is
9. Setup Interfaces using dynamic inventory ansible-playbook 02_setup_interfaces.yml -i nautobot_inventory.yml
10. Run the audit ansible-playbook 03_audit_nautobot.yml -i nautobot_inventory.yml where you have updated the information in the nautobot_inventory.yml file

ENV File setup

NAUTOBOT_TOKEN=<Nautobot Key>
NAUTOBOT_URL=<URL of Nautobot>

Group Vars, Host Vars

---
ansible_user: <username>
ansible_password: <password>
ansible_network_os: <corresponding Ansible OS>

hostvars will only contain information overriding data points. In the example, the only thing set in the host vars section is:

---
rack_location: 41

URLs

Helpful URLs have a few other links that may be helpful.