Advice on improving my playbooks efficiency? - ansible

Question

Started to experiment with Ansible and using playbooks to automate some routine tasks on network devices. I was able to get some basic stuff working and learn in the process but I know my knowledge is limited so when I see this playbook and how much stuff seems redundant I have to assume there are better ways to eliminate some of the redundancy and make things cleaner and more efficient.
Example I want to try to use and explain in order to get some ideas on is around configuring a new vlan on a group of devices.
Typically a new vlan first needs to be configured on the two distribution switches and then there are specific interfaces on those two switches that we have to add the vlan to.
So, for this first part I have the two hosts in a group called "dist" in my hosts file:
[dist]
DIST01 ansible_host=10.10.1.1
DIST02 ansible_host=10.10.1.2
Then I created the following in my playbook:
- name: Add Heartbeat VLAN to DIST
hosts: dist
connection: local
gather_facts: no
tasks:
- name: Include Login Credentials
include_vars: secrets.yml
- name: Define Provider
set_fact:
provider:
host: "{{ ansible_host }}"
username: "{{ creds['username'] }}"
password: "{{ creds['password'] }}"
tasks:
- name: Ensure VLAN Exists
provider: "{{ provider }}"
nxos_vlan: vlan_id="2600" state=present host={{ ansible_host }}
- name: Ensure VLAN Name Configured
provider: "{{ provider }}"
nxos_vlan: vlan_id={{ item.vid }} name={{ item.name }} host={{ ansible_host }} state=present
with_items:
- { vid: 2600, name: Ansible Heartbeat VLAN }
- name: ASSIGN VLAN TO TRUNK PORTS
nxos_switchport:
interface: "{{ item.interface }}"
mode: trunk
trunk_vlans: "{{ item.vlan }}"
provider: "{{ provider }}"
with_items:
- { interface: po850, vlan: 2600 }
- { interface: po860, vlan: 2600 }
- { interface: po865, vlan: 2600 }
- { interface: po868, vlan: 2600 }
- { interface: po871, vlan: 2600 }
- { interface: po872, vlan: 2600 }
- { interface: po875, vlan: 2600 }
- { interface: po877, vlan: 2600 }
- { interface: po884, vlan: 2600 }
So, for each host in that group it iterates through a list of interfaces / ports and adds the vlan specified.
Question #1.
First thing that stands out as being "inefficient" in my mind is I don't believe its very wise to have to specify the "vlan: 2600" every where.
I would think I should just set the vlan as a variable some where (in the playbook? in some other file that gets called?) to be used in each case where it is needed.
Next set of tasks:
After the previous task the next requires us to connect to each access switch that needs the vlan to be deployed on and configure the new vlan there.
The issue I run into here is that the port-channel on each of these switches is a different interface #. So I can't apply the same config by just iterating through a list of devices.
For instance what I have to do is something like this:
host: ACCESS01 interface: po850 vlan: 2600
host: ACCESS02 interface: po860 vlan: 2600
host: ACCESS03 interface: po870 vlan: 2600
So for each host/switch you add the vlan to the interface associated with that switch.
I just created a new task for each device that specifies the interface to configure for that switch.
Example:
- name: Add Heartbeat VLAN to ACCESS01
hosts: ACCESS01
connection: local
gather_facts: no
tasks:
- name: Include Login Credentials
include_vars: secrets.yml
- name: Define Provider
set_fact:
provider:
host: "{{ ansible_host }}"
username: "{{ creds['username'] }}"
password: "{{ creds['password'] }}"
tasks:
- name: Ensure VLAN Exists
provider: "{{ provider }}"
nxos_vlan: vlan_id="2600" state=present host={{ ansible_host }}
- name: Ensure VLAN Name Configured
provider: "{{ provider }}"
nxos_vlan: vlan_id={{ item.vid }} name={{ item.name }} host={{ ansible_host }} state=present
with_items:
- { vid: 2600, name: Ansible Heartbeat VLAN }
- name: ASSIGN VLAN TO PORTS
nxos_switchport:
interface: "{{ item.interface }}"
mode: trunk
trunk_vlans: "{{ item.vlan }}"
provider: "{{ provider }}"
with_items:
- { interface: po850, vlan: 2600 }
- name: Add Heartbeat VLAN to ACCESS02
hosts: ACCESS02
connection: local
gather_facts: no
tasks:
- name: Include Login Credentials
include_vars: secrets.yml
- name: Define Provider
set_fact:
provider:
host: "{{ ansible_host }}"
username: "{{ creds['username'] }}"
password: "{{ creds['password'] }}"
tasks:
- name: Ensure VLAN Exists
provider: "{{ provider }}"
nxos_vlan: vlan_id="2600" state=present host={{ ansible_host }}
- name: Ensure VLAN Name Configured
provider: "{{ provider }}"
nxos_vlan: vlan_id={{ item.vid }} name={{ item.name }} host={{ ansible_host }} state=present
with_items:
- { vid: 2600, name: Ansible Heartbeat VLAN }
- name: ASSIGN VLAN TO PORTS
nxos_switchport:
interface: "{{ item.interface }}"
mode: trunk
trunk_vlans: "{{ item.vlan }}"
provider: "{{ provider }}"
with_items:
- { interface: po860, vlan: 2600 }
- name: Add Heartbeat VLAN to ACCESS03
hosts: ACCESS03
connection: local
gather_facts: no
tasks:
- name: Include Login Credentials
include_vars: secrets.yml
- name: Define Provider
set_fact:
provider:
host: "{{ ansible_host }}"
username: "{{ creds['username'] }}"
password: "{{ creds['password'] }}"
tasks:
- name: Ensure VLAN Exists
provider: "{{ provider }}"
nxos_vlan: vlan_id="2600" state=present host={{ ansible_host }}
- name: Ensure VLAN Name Configured
provider: "{{ provider }}"
nxos_vlan: vlan_id={{ item.vid }} name={{ item.name }} host={{ ansible_host }} state=present
with_items:
- { vid: 2600, name: Ansible Heartbeat VLAN }
- name: ASSIGN VLAN TO PORTS
nxos_switchport:
interface: "{{ item.interface }}"
mode: trunk
trunk_vlans: "{{ item.vlan }}"
provider: "{{ provider }}"
with_items:
- { interface: po870, vlan: 2600 }
And so you see... I know when I see things almost identical repeated over and over again I have to assume there is a better way and I just don't know enough yet to solve on my own.
Question #2. I suspect there is a better way to handle repeating the following for each task in the playbook:
tasks:
- name: Include Login Credentials
include_vars: secrets.yml
- name: Define Provider
set_fact:
provider:
host: "{{ ansible_host }}"
username: "{{ creds['username'] }}"
password: "{{ creds['password'] }}"
Question #3, Could I possibly just list this data some where, either in the playbook or another file maybe and then create a task that could iterate through the data to determine what port needs to be configured?
host: ACCESS01 interface: po850 vlan: 2600
host: ACCESS02 interface: po860 vlan: 2600
host: ACCESS03 interface: po870 vlan: 2600
Some sort of logic to this in my mind would be something like, if "host" equals "ACCESS01" then interface equals po850.
So the task could just be referencing variables that are populated depending on the host its currently working on?
Any thoughts and advice on improving both the playbook and my knowledge of things is greatly appreciated. I guess I'm look for the most "ansiblistic" way to accomplish this. That's not a word huh?

Answer 1

For Question#1, you can use like this:
- name: ASSIGN VLAN TO TRUNK PORTS
nxos_switchport:
interface: "{{ item.interface }}"
mode: trunk
trunk_vlans: "{{ item.vlan | default('2600') }}"
provider: "{{ provider }}"
with_items:
- interface: po850
- interface: po860
- interface: po865
- interface: po868
- interface: po871
- interface: po872
- interface: po875
- interface: po884
If you want to assign different vlan to one or more interface(s), then you can use like this:
- { interface: po850, vlan: 2700 }
Hope that help you.