The Ansible Cisco example

Cisco's support in Ansible is categorized by the operating systems IOS, IOS-XR, and NX-OS. We have already seen a number of NX-OS examples, so in this section let's try to manage IOS-based devices.

Our host file will consist of two hosts, R1 and R2:

[ios_devices]
R1 ansible_host=192.168.24.250
R2 ansible_host=192.168.24.251

[ios_devices:vars]
username=cisco
password=cisco

Our playbook, cisco_5.yml, will use the ios_command module to execute arbitrary show commands:

    ---
    - name: IOS Show Commands
      hosts: "ios_devices"
      gather_facts: false
      connection: local

      vars:
        cli:
          host: "{{ ansible_host }}"
          username: "{{ username }}"
          password: "{{ password }}"
          transport: cli

      tasks:
        - name: ios show commands
          ios_command:
            commands:
              - show version | i IOS
              - show run | i hostname
            provider: "{{ cli }}"

          register: output

...