Using Ansible + NDFC to Build EVPN Fabric

To begin, you will create a set of Ansible roles that will contain procedural tasks to build and manage NDFC fabric(s).

Roles let you automatically load related vars, files, tasks, handlers, and other Ansible artifacts based on a known file structure. After you group your content in roles, you can easily reuse them and share them with other users.

Reference: Ansible Roles Documentation

Let's Get Started!

Step 1 - Change into the root project directory

cd ~/workspace/ndfclab/ansible

Step 2 - Create Ansible Role: create_fabric

ansible-galaxy init roles/create_fabric

You should see the following output:

    - Role roles/create_fabric was created successfully

Step 3 - Create Ansible Role: add_inventory

ansible-galaxy init roles/add_inventory

Step 4 - Create Ansible Role: manage_overlay

ansible-galaxy init roles/manage_overlay

Step 5 - Create Ansible Role: deploy

ansible-galaxy init roles/deploy

Step 6 - Remove Unused Role Directories

Right now, these roles are just generally empty directory folders with some boiler plate context and files, but each have a specific purpose within the role. You will only focus on populating the main tasks folder in each role but here is a link to more documentation about how roles are used and how each directory within a role can be used.

Reference: Roles Directory Structure

Since you are only going to focus on the tasks directory in the role directory, roles/[role_name]/tasks, in this lab so go ahead and remove the other folders.

find ~/workspace/ndfclab/ansible/roles/*/ 2>/dev/null -mindepth 1 -name tasks -prune -o -exec rm -rf {} \;

Step 7 - Verify Ansible NDFC Directory Structure

View the structure by issuing the tree command on the roles parent directory.

tree roles/

    roles/
    ├── add_inventory
    │   └── tasks
    │       └── main.yml
    ├── create_fabric
    │   └── tasks
    │       └── main.yml
    ├── deploy
    │   └── tasks
    │       └── main.yml
    └── manage_overlay
        └── tasks
            └── main.yml

    8 directories, 4 files

You should see 8 directories, 4 files.

Move to the next section where you will define the variables used to connect and authenticate to NDFC and variables used in the roles you just created in this section.