how can i check if cisco SG350X-24-K9-EU with ansible

[malekkhelifi59922]

i am new with cisco and i want to know how can i check if  cisco SG350X-24-K9-EU  switch is compatible with ansible

[balaji.bandi]

Not sure what you trying to achieve here., most of the cisco devices support ansible (i have not tried that model myself)

if you communicate with SSH, you should able to achieve what you like to do :

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/ios_command_module.html#ios-command-module

[malekkhelifi59922]

As I said I am new with all of this  so I want to know does it require NSO to work with it or Ansible it self will be an alternative for the NSO

[balaji.bandi]

we are not sure what your trying to achieve.  NSO - Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO)  you mean?

that is different than what you asking - we need to know more details here.

[malekkhelifi59922]

we wish to install a new building so our provider suggested that we use SG350X-24-K9-EU switchs (12 of them ) and we want to do network automation (we will try it for the first time) as NSO license is a little expensive for us, we wish to use a free open source tool so we want to try Ansible or I don't know if Ansible it will do the work and will replace NSO or no

 

[malekkhelifi59922]

it seems I don't know the difference between orchestration and automatisation of network and I was thinking that Ansible will replace NSO for me if you are kind enough can you help me with a little explanation of what is the difference here

[balaji.bandi]

I have not tried this model, but the model support.Cisco Network Plug and Play (PnP) feature with zero-touch (this is done majorly large kind of deployments), if you have only 12 devices to provisioning, suggest configuring manually(until you looking to invest some time and make it work).

here is example information :

https://developer.cisco.com/docs/ios-xe/#!day-zero-provisioning-quick-start-guide/network-pnp

[Seb Rupik]

Hi there,

Using the network_cli connection type with the ios_command module should work on an SG switches.

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/ios_command_module.html

The other IOS modules will probably not work on an SG switch as either the feature will not be present, the options different or the output returned will not be what is expected:

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/list_of_network_modules.html?extIdCarryOver=true&sc_cid=701f2000001OH7YAAW#ios

cheers,

Seb.

[malekkhelifi59922]

As I said I am new here so I want to know does it require NSO to work with it or Ansible it self will be an alternative for the NSO

[Seb Rupik]

Hi there,

NSO abstracts vendor specific nuances away from the configuration by storing it in YANG models. These YANG models can then be applied to different vendor platforms. I guess the theory is that you could hold your network config in these YANG models and switch between vendors on the underlying infrastructures by using different NEDs. I've only played with NSO a little...

Ansible on the other hand is based on playbooks which depend on modules which are very vendor specific as they expect the end device to return output in a certain manner/ pattern.

Both automation systems are useful is auditing and applying configuration at huge scales. For a few switches it may be overkill from a cost and training (time) perspective!

What would be worth doing is automating the configuration build process using CSVs and Python with jinja for building your configs and avoiding human fat finger issues!

cheers,

Seb.