arista.cvp - Automate CloudVision with Ansible

Description

Arista Networks supports Ansible for managing devices running the EOS operating system through CloudVision platform (CVP). This collection includes a set of Ansible modules that perform specific configuration tasks on a CVP server. These tasks include collecting facts, managing configlets, building topology with containers and devices, and running tasks.

Even if the arista.cvp collection is integrated with the arista.avd collection to automate configuration deployment, this collection can also be used outside of AVD tasks to populate your CloudVision server with your workflows.

Requirements

The CVP collection has the following requirements:

• Python 3.9+
• Ansible Core 2.15.0 to 2.18.x
• Install the arista.cvp collection
• Additional Python packages

For a full breakdown of the requirements, please see the official arista.cvp documentation.

Installations

Python

• Python >=3.9

Please check the minimum version supported by your ansible installation on the ansible website.

Additional Python Libraries required

Ansible version:

• ansible-core>=2.15.0,<2.19.0

3rd party Python libraries:

• cvprac
• requests
• jsonschema
• treelib (for modules in version 1)

ansible-galaxy collection install arista.cvp

You can also include it in a requirements.yml file and install it with ansible-galaxy collection install -r requirements.yml, using the format:

collections:
  - name: arista.cvp

Note that if you install the collection from Ansible Galaxy, it will not be upgraded automatically when you upgrade the Ansible package.

To upgrade the collection to the latest available version, run the following command:

ansible-galaxy collection install arista.cvp --upgrade

You can also install a specific version of the collection, for example, if you need to downgrade when something is broken in the latest version (please report an issue in this repository). Use the following syntax to install version 3.10.1:

ansible-galaxy collection install arista.cvp:==3.10.1

See using Ansible collections for more details.

Additional Python Dependencies

The CVP collection requires the installation of additional Python packages. To ensure you install the correct versions, run the following commands:

export ARISTA_CVP_DIR=$(ansible-galaxy collection list arista.cvp --format yaml | head -1 | cut -d: -f1)
pip3 install -r ${ARISTA_CVP_DIR}/arista/cvp/requirements.txt

Use Cases

This example outlines how to use arista.cvp to create a container's topology on Arista CloudVision.

A dedicated repository is available for step-by-step examples on ansible-cvp-toi.

A complete end-to-end demo using Arista Validated Design collection and CloudVision modules is available as an example.

Below is a very basic example of build a container topology on a CloudVision platform, assuming you have three vEOS named veos0{1,3} and a configlet named alias.

---
- name: Playbook to demonstrate cvp modules.
  hosts: cv_server
  connection: local
  gather_facts: no
  collections:
    - arista.cvp
  vars:
    # Configlet definition
    device_configuration:
      mlag-01a-config: "{{lookup('file', './config-router-mlag01a.conf')}}"
      mlag-01b-config: "{{lookup('file', './config-router-mlag01b.conf')}}"

    # Container definition
    containers_provision:
        Fabric:
          parentContainerName: Tenant
        Spines:
          parentContainerName: Fabric
        Leaves:
          parentContainerName: Fabric
          configlets:
              - alias
        MLAG01:
          parentContainerName: Leaves

    # Device definition
    devices_provision:
      - fqdn: mlag-01a
        parentContainerName: 'MLAG01'
        configlets:
            - 'mlag-01a-config'
        systemMacAddress: '50:8d:00:e3:78:aa'
      - fqdn: mlag-01b
        parentContainerName: 'MLAG01'
        configlets:
            - 'mlag-01b-config'
        systemMacAddress: '50:8d:00:e3:78:bb'

  tasks:
    - name: "Build Container topology on {{inventory_hostname}}"
      arista.cvp.cv_container_v3:
        topology: '{{containers_provision}}'

    - name: "Configure devices on {{inventory_hostname}}"
      arista.cvp.cv_device_v3:
        devices: '{{devices_provision}}'

As modules of this collection are based on HTTPAPI connection plugin, authentication elements shall be declared using this plugin mechanism and are automatically shared with arista.cvp.cv_* modules.

[development]
cv_server  ansible_host= 10.90.224.122 ansible_httpapi_host=10.90.224.122

[development:vars]
ansible_connection=httpapi
ansible_httpapi_use_ssl=True
ansible_httpapi_validate_certs=False
ansible_user=cvpadmin
ansible_password=ansible
ansible_network_os=eos
ansible_httpapi_port=443

As modules of this collection are based on HTTPAPI connection plugin, authentication elements shall be declared using this plugin mechanism and are automatically shared with arista.cvp.cv_* modules.

Testing

Please see our pipeline workflows to view the in-depth testing performed against the collection.

Contributing

Contributing pull requests are gladly welcomed for this repository. If you are planning a significant change, please start a discussion first to ensure we can merge it.

You can also open an issue to report any problem or to submit enhancement.

Support

• The arista.avd Ansible collection version 4.x releases and higher offer full support from Arista TAC, which includes the arista.cvp Ansible collection. If your organization has the A-Care subscription please don't hesitate to contact TAC with any questions or issues.
• Community support is provided via Github discussions board.

License

The project is published under Apache 2.0 License