How to Install and Run Ansible for Automating Extreme Networks Device Configuration on My System?

[alisaaine]

Hello everyone,

I’m working on setting up Ansible to automate the configuration and management of Extreme Networks devices on my system, and I’m looking for some advice on the best approach. As I’m still relatively new to network automation, I’m hoping to get some insights from those who have experience using Ansible or other DevOps software for similar tasks.

To start, I need to know the steps to properly install Ansible on my local machine (which is running [insert OS name]). I’m aware there may be dependencies or configuration settings that I need to handle, especially when working in a networked environment. Once installed, my goal is to configure Ansible to communicate with Extreme Networks devices. It would be great to learn about any specific Ansible modules or playbooks that are optimized for interacting with these devices.

I also want to ensure that I’m following best practices when creating playbooks for automating tasks such as configuration management, firmware updates, and policy enforcement. I’ve heard that structuring playbooks correctly is key to maintaining efficiency and scalability, especially when managing multiple devices.

While I’m setting this up, I expect to encounter some common challenges or pitfalls, so I’d appreciate any tips on how to troubleshoot or optimize my process. Additionally, if there are any helpful resources—whether official documentation, community forums, or tutorials—that can guide me through this, I’d be grateful for the recommendations.

Thanks in advance for your help and expertise!

Best regards,
Alisa Aine

[g3rm · Accepted solution]

Hello Alisa,

I, too, am trying to automate my life away because I'm very lazy and want to graduate into the world of Infrastructure as Code. I recently spun up Ansible on a Ubuntu VM and started running some basic playbooks on how to configure virtual SwitchEngine devices to start off.

One thing I learned and wanted to share with you is that the exos and voss modules are located within the community.network collection in Ansible Galaxy. Unfortunately, the community.network collection will be deprecated in a few months. This means that the modules I am relying on right now (and what SwitchEngine and FabricEngine use) will be unsupported so its probably not a good idea to get comfortable with using these modules unless Extreme wants to publish their own. I have not seen any activity with them providing their own collections as I have seen with other vendors. I think Extreme just really wants their customers to use Site Engine or XIQ.

If you still want to continue down the route of spinning up Ansible. I'd advise building an actual control node on some virtual Linux VM. I think you can get away with running it on VMware player on your personal device but I feel like having a dedicated virtual server to run Ansible is preferable. Once that's spun up, you just download Ansible depending on your Linux flavor. I did Ubuntu and its a simple "apt install ansible."

Once that's all done, I would advice looking at Ansible's documentation to build an inventory file and basic playbook to get your feet wet. If you want to save time, asking AI just gives you answers. Perplexity.ai is pretty good. There's a bit of a learning curve because you'll have to get used to YAML or INI but they're pretty straightforward and human-readable.

Hope this helps,

g3rm