Operating state (WIP)

operating_state is an Ansible role that collects operating state information about various resources on network devices and returns parsed and structured data.

The following resources are current supported:

• arp
• cdp
• fex
• hardware
• interfaces
• lldp
• mac
• spanning_tree
• system
• version
• vlan
• vlan.private_vlan
• vpc

The following network operating systems are currently supported:

• ios/iosxe
• nxos
• eos

The following parser engines are supported:

• native_json: Use the network device's native json support
• native_xml: Use the network device's native xml support
• pyats: Use the Cisco pyats/genie library

Quick start

- hosts: all
  gather_facts: false
  roles:
  - role: operating_state
    gather_states:
    - all
  tasks:
  - debug:
      var: ansible_facts

Role parameters

• gather_states: (required) Gather the operating state for a list of resources. all will gather all available resources. Combined with all, !resource will exclude the resource.
• gather_states_engine (optional) Set the parsing engine for a particular network operating system.
• fact_key (optional) Store the gathered state information in a new root fact key.

Use cases:

Only gather a specfic resource

- hosts: all
  gather_facts: false
  roles:
  - role: operating_state
    gather_states:
    - interfaces
  tasks:
  - debug:
      var: ansible_facts

Gather all, excluding a specfic resource

- hosts: all
  gather_facts: false
  roles:
  - role: operating_state
    gather_states:
    - all
    - !interfaces
  tasks:
  - debug:
      var: ansible_facts

Gather all resource statistics before and after a network change and compare

- hosts: all
  gather_facts: false
  roles:
  - role: operating_state # this is necessary to register the plugins
  tasks:
  - include_role:
      name: operating_state
    vars:
      fact_key: before
      only_stats: True
      gather_states:
      - all
  - debug:
      msg: Make changes here
  - include_role:
      name: operating_state
    vars:
      fact_key: after
      only_stats: True
      gather_states:
      - all

  - name: Compare the before and after in dotted format
    fact_diff:
      before: "{{ before|default({})|to_dotted }}"
      after: "{{ after|default({})|to_dotted }}"

Additional documentation

Additional documentation for the included filter and action plugins can be found in the docs folder.