NXOS Platform Options

Cisco NXOS supports multiple connections. This page offers details on how each connection works in Ansible 2.6 and how to use it.

Topics

• NXOS Platform Options
  • Connections Available
  • Using CLI in Ansible 2.6
    • Example CLI group_vars/nxos.yml
    • Example CLI Task
  • Using NX-API in Ansible 2.6
    • Enabling NX-API
    • Example NX-API group_vars/nxos.yml
    • Example NX-API Task

Connections Available

	CLI	NX-API
Protocol	SSH	HTTP(S)
Credentials	uses SSH keys / SSH-agent if present accepts -u myuser -k if using password	uses HTTPS certificates if present
Indirect Access	via a bastion (jump host)	via a web proxy
Connection Settings	ansible_connection: network_cli	* ansible_connection: httpapi OR * ansible_connection: local with transport: nxapi in the provider dictionary
Enable Mode (Privilege Escalation) supported as of 2.5.3	supported - use ansible_become: yes with ansible_become_method: enable and ansible_become_pass:	not supported by NX-API
Returned Data Format	stdout[0].	stdout[0].messages[0].

For legacy playbooks, NXOS still supports ansible_connection: local. We recommend modernizing to use ansible_connection: network_cli or ansible_connection: httpapi as soon as possible.

Using CLI in Ansible 2.6

Example CLI group_vars/nxos.yml

ansible_connection: network_cli
ansible_network_os: nxos
ansible_user: myuser
ansible_ssh_pass: !vault...
ansible_become: yes
ansible_become_method: enable
ansible_become_pass: !vault...
ansible_ssh_common_args: '-o ProxyCommand="ssh -W %h:%p -q bastion01"'

• If you are using SSH keys (including an ssh-agent) you can remove the ansible_ssh_pass configuration.
• If you are accessing your host directly (not through a bastion/jump host) you can remove the ansible_ssh_common_args configuration.
• If you are accessing your host through a bastion/jump host, you cannot include your SSH password in the ProxyCommand directive. To prevent secrets from leaking out (for example in ps output), SSH does not support providing passwords via environment variables.

Example CLI Task

- name: Backup current switch config (nxos)
  nxos_config:
    backup: yes
  register: backup_nxos_location
  when: ansible_network_os == 'nxos'

Using NX-API in Ansible 2.6

Enabling NX-API

Before you can use NX-API to connect to a switch, you must enable NX-API. To enable NX-API on a new switch via Ansible, use the nxos_nxapi module via the CLI connection. Set up group_vars/nxos.yml just like in the CLI example above, then run a playbook task like this:

- name: Enable NX-API
   nxos_nxapi:
       enable_http: yes
       enable_https: yes
   when: ansible_network_os == 'nxos'

To find out more about the options for enabling HTTP/HTTPS and local http see the nxos_nxapi module documentation.

Once NX-API is enabled, change your group_vars/nxos.yml to use the NX-API connection.

Example NX-API group_vars/nxos.yml

ansible_connection: httpapi
ansible_network_os: nxos
ansible_user: myuser
ansible_ssh_pass: !vault...
proxy_env:
  http_proxy: http://proxy.example.com:8080

• If you are accessing your host directly (not through a web proxy) you can remove the proxy_env configuration.
• If you are accessing your host through a web proxy using https, change http_proxy to https_proxy.

Example NX-API Task

- name: Backup current switch config (nxos)
  nxos_config:
    backup: yes
  register: backup_nxos_location
  environment: "{{ proxy_env }}"
  when: ansible_network_os == 'nxos'

In this example the proxy_env variable defined in group_vars gets passed to the environment option of the module used in the task.

Warning

Never store passwords in plain text. We recommend using SSH keys to authenticate SSH connections. Ansible supports ssh-agent to manage your SSH keys. If you must use passwords to authenticate SSH connections, we recommend encrypting them with Ansible Vault.