Create a network report automation job template

Learn how to create a network report job template in automation

Lab 2 - Infrastructure Awareness

This lab will walk you through using Automation controller to create some Dynamic Documentation to retrieve and display information about a Cisco CSR (cloud services router) running IOS-XE.

Lab Diagram

The lab diagram for this demonstration is very simple. There will be one Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 device running automation controller. It is directly connected to the management network for a Cisco CSR (cloud services router) running IOS-XE.

Lab diagram

Quick Automation Victories

Infrastructure Awareness is a great introductory use case for network operators because it is:

  • Read-only, no changing of production configs

  • Normalizes configs into structured data

  • Provides valuable information via Dynamic Documentation

Automation controller

Automation controller provides a standardized way to define, operate, and delegate Ansible automation across the enterprise. It includes a Web User Interface (WebUI) that we will be using for this challenge.

Job Templates

Everything in Automation controller revolves around the concept of a Job Template. Job Templates allow Ansible Playbooks to be controlled, delegated and scaled for an organization.

Job templates also encourage the reuse of Ansible Playbook content and collaboration between teams.

  • A Job Template requires:

    • An Inventory to run the job against

    • A Credential to login to devices.

    • A Project which contains Ansible Playbooks

Challenge 1 - Creating a Network Report Job Template

For this challenge exercise you are going to create a Job Template in Automation controller. We are going to use the Network Toolkit Collection (https://github.com/network-automation/toolkit) that contains multi-vendor playbooks for creating a network report, backups, and more.

The credentials (username and password), inventory (a single Cisco router) and project (the network toolkit repository listed above) are already added. We simply need to tie them together into a simple re-usable Job Template for our organization to use.

Lets get started

That is the end of of your lab briefing!

For this exercise we are going to create an automation job on Automation controller

Login to automation controller

  • To login to automation controller select the Automation controller WebUI tab at the top of your screen.

    Login with the following credentials:

    username

    admin

    password

    ansible123!

Step 1 - Create an automation job

  • In the left navigation menu, expand Automation Execution and then click on Templates.

  • You will see a list of Job Templates. Job templates encourage the reuse of Ansible playbook content and collaboration between teams.

  • Click the blue Add button and select Create job template

  • Assign the following values

    Name Value

    Name

    Network Automation - Report

    Job Type

    Run

    Inventory

    Network Inventory

    Project

    Network Toolkit

    Playbook

    playbooks/network_report.yml

    Execution Environment

    Network Execution Environment

    Credentials

    Network Credential

  • Click the Create job template button to save your job template.

Step 2 - Verify

Click the Next button below to verify the job template was created.