The Ansible Cisco example

Cisco support in Ansible is categorized by the operating systems: IOS, IOSXR, and NXOS. We have already seen a number of NXOS 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...