Exercise 1: Using the bigip_facts module

Table of Contents

• Objective
• Guide
• Playbook Output
• Solution
• Going Further

Objective

Demonstrate use of the BIG-IP Facts module to grab facts (useful information) from a F5 BIG-IP device and display them to the terminal window using the debug module.

Guide

Step 1:

Using your text editor of choice create a new file called bigip-facts.yml.

[student1@ansible ~]$ nano bigip-facts.yml

vim and nano are available on the control node, as well as Visual Studio and Atom via RDP

Step 2:

Ansible playbooks are YAML files. YAML is a structured encoding format that is also extremely human readable (unlike it’s subset - the JSON format).

Enter the following play definition into bigip-facts.yml:

---
- name: GRAB F5 FACTS
  hosts: f5
  connection: local
  gather_facts: no

• The --- at the top of the file indicates that this is a YAML file.
• The hosts: f5, indicates the play is run only on the F5 BIG-IP device
• connection: local tells the Playbook to run locally (rather than SSHing to itself)
• gather_facts: no disables facts gathering. We are not using any fact variables for this playbook.

Step 3

Next, add the first task. This task will use the bigip_facts module to grab useful information from the BIG-IP device.

---
- name: GRAB F5 FACTS
  hosts: f5
  connection: local
  gather_facts: no


  tasks:

    - name: COLLECT BIG-IP FACTS
      bigip_facts:
        include: system_info
        server: "{{private_ip}}"
        user: "{{ansible_user}}"
        password: "{{ansible_ssh_pass}}"
        server_port: 8443
      register: bigip_facts

A play is a list of tasks. Tasks and modules have a 1:1 correlation. Ansible modules are reusable, standalone scripts that can be used by the Ansible API, or by the ansible or ansible-playbook programs. They return information to ansible by printing a JSON string to stdout before exiting.

• name: COLLECT BIG-IP FACTS is a user defined description that will display in the terminal output.
• bigip_facts: tells the task which module to use. Everything except register is a module parameter defined on the module documentation page.
• The include: system_info parameter tells the module only to grab system level information.
• The server: "" parameter tells the module to connect to the F5 BIG-IP IP address, which is stored as a variable private_ip in inventory
• The user: "" parameter tells the module the username to login to the F5 BIG-IP device with
• Thepassword: "" parameter tells the module the password to login to the F5 BIG-IP device with
• The server_port: 8443 parameter tells the module the port to connect to the F5 BIG-IP device with
• register: bigip_facts tells the task to save the output to a variable bigip_facts

Step 4

Next, add the second task. This task will use the debug module to print the output from bigip_facts variable we registered the facts to.

---
- name: GRAB F5 FACTS
  hosts: f5
  connection: local
  gather_facts: no


  tasks:

    - name: COLLECT BIG-IP FACTS
      bigip_facts:
        include: system_info
        server: "{{private_ip}}"
        user: "{{ansible_user}}"
        password: "{{ansible_ssh_pass}}"
        server_port: 8443
      register: bigip_facts

    - name: COMPLETE BIG-IP SYSTEM INFORMATION
      debug:
        var: bigip_facts

• The name: COMPLETE BIG-IP SYSTEM INFORMATION is a user defined description that will display in the terminal output.
• debug: tells the task to use the debug module.
• The var: bigip_facts parameter tells the module to display the variable bigip_facts.

Step 5

Run the playbook - exit back into the command line of the control host and execute the following:

[student1@ansible ~]$ ansible-playbook bigip-facts.yml

Step 6

Finally lets add two more tasks to get more specific info from facts gathered.

---
- name: GRAB F5 FACTS
  hosts: f5
  connection: local
  gather_facts: no

  tasks:
    - name: COLLECT BIG-IP FACTS
      bigip_facts:
        include: system_info
        server: "{{private_ip}}"
        user: "{{ansible_user}}"
        password: "{{ansible_ssh_pass}}"
        server_port: 8443
      register: bigip_facts

    - name: COMPLETE BIG-IP SYSTEM INFORMATION
      debug:
        var: bigip_facts

    - name: DISPLAY ONLY THE MAC ADDRESS
      debug:
        var: bigip_facts['ansible_facts']['system_info']['base_mac_address']

    - name: DISPLAY ONLY THE VERSION
      debug:
        var: bigip_facts['ansible_facts']['system_info']['product_information']['product_version']

• var: bigip_facts['ansible_facts']['system_info']['base_mac_address'] displays the MAC address for the BIG-IP device
• bigip_facts['ansible_facts']['system_info']['product_information']['product_version'] displays the product version BIG-IP device

Because the bigip_facts module returns useful information in structured data, it is really easy to grab specific information without using regex or filters. Fact modules are very powerful tools to grab specific device information that can be used in subsequent tasks, or even used to create dynamic documentation (reports, csv files, markdown).

Step 7

Run the playbook - exit back into the command line of the control host and execute the following:

[student1@ansible ~]$ ansible-playbook bigip-facts.yml

Playbook Output

The output will look as follows.

[student1@ansible ~]$ ansible-playbook bigip-facts.yml

PLAY [GRAB F5 FACTS] ***********************************************************

TASK [COLLECT BIG-IP FACTS] ****************************************************
ok: [f5]

TASK [COMPLETE BIG-IP SYSTEM INFORMATION] **************************************
ok: [f5] => {
    "bigip_facts": {
        "ansible_facts": {
            "system_info": {
                "base_mac_address": "0A:D1:27:C1:84:76",
                "blade_temperature": [],
                "chassis_slot_information": [],
                "globally_unique_identifier": "0A:D1:27:C1:84:76",
                "group_id": "DefaultGroup",
                "hardware_information": [
<<output removed for brevity>>

---
TASK [DISPLAY ONLY THE MAC ADDRESS] *******************************************
ok: [f5] => {
    "bigip_facts['ansible_facts']['system_info']['base_mac_address']": "0A:D1:27:C1:84:76"
}

TASK [DISPLAY ONLY THE VERSION] ***********************************************
ok: [f5] => {
    "bigip_facts['ansible_facts']['system_info']['product_information']['product_version']": "13.1.0.2"
}

PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
f5                         : ok=4    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0

Solution

The finished Ansible Playbook is provided here for an Answer key. Click here for bigip-facts.yml.

Going Further

For this bonus exercise add the tags: debug paramteter (at the task level) to the exiting debug task.

- name: COMPLETE BIG-IP SYSTEM INFORMATION
  debug:
    var: bigip_facts
  tags: debug

Now re-run the playbook with the --skip-tags-debug command line option.

ansible-playbook bigip-facts.yml --skip-tags=debug

The Ansible Playbook will only run three tasks, skipping the COMPLETE BIG-IP SYSTEM INFORMATION task.

You have finished this exercise. Click here to return to the lab guide