Does anyone know if someone is already working on a module to support managing and deploying to IBM's DataPower appliances?
Even though it's not a network device per se, it would fit nicely into the current focus on adding support for network devices, since it is managed through a CLI in much the same way as a network device.
I'd certainly be interested in this, and I suspect it would be a boon to anyone managing more than a couple of DP boxes.
I found this post looking for any details that might help me try and at least pull some information off a datapower box. I'd be interested to know if this is possible.
I do think you might face an issue developing CLI automation for datapower because, as every bit of documentation I've seen reiterates constantly, the CLI isn't designed for automation. That being said, even if it were, the command line isnt likely to support most of what already exists for ansible and even the basics (ie. Authentication and set up tasks) are tricky because if you SSH to a DP box it doesn't use your credentials to do anything more than create the initial connection, it prompts you for DP credentials once the session is created.
https://github.com/dgraum/datapower-ansible
This repository is an incubator for the IDG modules for Ansible. The architecture of the modules makes use of the XML and REST Management Interfaces