Cisco ACI - ansible - putting epgs in shutdown

[Geir Sand-Strand]

I have an Tenant with an AP an several EPGs.  Before migration to ACI I have used ansible to create the tenant, ap, epg, bd and so on...

When I create the EPGs, I would like to put them in shutdown.  But not by using GUI and clickinto into each of them and putting them in shutdown.  I looks like the shutdown-parameter is not in the ansible epg module. 

Is there a way to easily do this?  Is the alternative doing a POST for shutting them down or is there a way by using ansible that I haven't found yet?

Br

Geir

[Jayesh Singh]

Hi Geir,

I am failing to understand your following statement:

"When I create the EPGs, I would like to put them in shutdown."

There is no way we can shut down the EPGs, however we can detach the domains(physical or VMM domain) from the EPGs to keep them inactive.

I am unable to interpret the requirement here precisely, it would be helpful if you share more details on what we want to achieve here.

Regards,

Jayesh

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[Remi Astruc]

Hello,

I guess Geir talks about the new feature in 4.0.1 which allows to "shutdown" an EPG.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/aci/apic/sw/4-x/release-notes/Cisco-APIC-Release-Notes-401.html#FabricScaleandOtherEnhancements

There may not be an Ansible way to do that today.

Remi Astruc

[Jayesh Singh]

Thanks Remi!

Now that makes me feel like an old guy :-P

Need to get my hands on ACI 4.x ASAP

[Geir Sand-Strand]

Thx for the reply.

We are running 4.1.(1j) so there are a shutdown under the EPG in the GUI.  Would sure like to have that done with ansible, but it doesn't seem to be an option.

Geir

[RedNectar]

Hi Geir,

I've been watching this thread with interest over a few days hoping someone would tell you how to achieve what you want using the APIs - I can't remember exactly what you need to do, but I do remember going to a Cisco Live presentation that outlined how you can set any value using Ansible, so long as you knew the right dn in xml or json format (just like Postman).  But I don't know enough to tell you HOW to do it, but hopefully I might point you in the direction where you might find the answer, and presumably you already know how to determine the xml/json payload you need using the API inspector.

This might be a good place to start: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/dev_guide/developing_modules_general_aci.html

which if you follow the links will take you to: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/aci/apic/sw/2-x/rest_cfg/2_1_x/b_Cisco_APIC_REST_API_Configuration_Guide/b_Cisco_APIC_REST_API_Configuration_Guide_chapter_01.html

[Marcel Zehnder]

Hi

You can use the aci_rest ansible module (https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/2.4/aci_rest_module.html) to post the following json-dict to /api/mo.json - you need to replace <YOUR-EPG-DN> with your actual EPG-DN (for example epg "APP" in application-profile "TEST" in tenant "MZE" is "uni/tn-MZE/ap-TEST/epg-APP") 

HTH

Marcel

{
  "fvAEPg": {
    "attributes": {
      "dn": "<YOUR-EPG-DN>",
      "shutdown": "true"
    }
  }
}

[Marcel Zehnder]

The complete example:

ansible task:

- name: SHUTDOWN EPG
  aci_rest:
    hostname: 'YOUR APIC IP'
    username: 'yourUsername'
    password: 'yourPassword'
    method: post
    path: /api/mo.json
    src: /path/to/json/file.json
  delegate_to: localhost

Config File (/path/to/json/file.json)

{
  "fvAEPg": {
    "attributes": {
      "dn": "uni/tn-MZE/ap-TEST/epg-APP",
      "shutdown": "true"
    }
  }

Or without a config file:

- name: SHUTDOWN EPG
  aci_rest:
    hostname: 'YOUR APIC IP'
    username: 'yourUsername'
    password: 'yourPassword'
    method: post
    path: /api/mo.json
    content: |
       {
       "fvAEPg": {
       "attributes": {
        "dn": "uni/tn-MZE/ap-TEST/epg-APP",
        "shutdown": "true"
      }
     }
  delegate_to: localhost

[Geir Sand-Strand]

That worked nice :-)

But what if I want to shutdown more epgs, can I do that in the same json-section? How would it the look like?

Br

Geir

[Marcel Zehnder · Accepted solution]

You will need to introduce loops in your ansible task:

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_loops.html

It will look something like that:

- name: SHUTDOWN EPG
  aci_rest:
    hostname: 'YOUR APIC IP'
    username: 'yourUsername'
    password: 'yourPassword'
    method: post
    path: /api/mo.json
    content: |
       {
       "fvAEPg": {
       "attributes": {
        "dn":  "{{ item }}",
        "shutdown": "true"
      }
     }
    loop:
     - uni/tn-MZE/ap-TEST/epg-APP1
     - uni/tn-MZE/ap-TEST/epg-APP2
     - uni/tn-MZE/ap-TEST/epg-APP3
  delegate_to: localhost

/Marcel

[Geir Sand-Strand]

Thx, that worked :-)

Now I can create all the epgs and put them i shutdown.  When we start migrating old core to ACI, I can easily move the epgs to "no shutdown".

Geir