Developing a custom Ansible filter plugin

Mon, 14 Mar 2022 14:36:54 +0100

In this post I will show you how to develop an Ansible custom filter plugin that transforms live data obtained from a network device into the correct format for further use in subsequent Ansible playbook tasks.

What are Ansible filters?

Ansible filters are powerful Python functions for manipulating data within Ansible. Filters receive input data via a variable, then perform a fixed operation and returns the result. Use cases are combining lists, transforming JSON data, manipulating strings, parsing data, …

Backup Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Omniswitch AOS6 & AOS8 using Ansible

Mon, 31 May 2021 19:16:10 +0100

This demo shows how you can easily backup your entire Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Omniswitch environment using Ansible. You can store the backup files locally or even better, push them to a remote GIT repository. The result is a CMDB (configuration management database) in which the different backup versions are stored and where you can easily compare them to track changes.

Switch configuration stored into a GIT repository

For AOS6 devices we use Gilbert Moisio’s “ale_aos” Ansible collection to save the CLI output captured from the “show configuration snapshot” command through SSH. For AOS8 devices we can utilize the REST API to send the necessary GET requests via the Ansible built-in “uri” module.

NetDevOps

Developing a custom Ansible filter plugin

What are Ansible filters?

Backup Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Omniswitch AOS6 & AOS8 using Ansible