Marshalling Cisco AireOS/WLC devices with ansible

Archives Ansible Project
1

Hey all,

I just filed #22098: “Feature Idea: Add module for Cisco AireOS devices (WLCs)”.

We have a Cisco WLC where we need to dynamically create/destroy or enable/disable wireless networks. I even need to dynamically change the PSKs for a few of them.
Right now, I have a simple, crufty, python script that sends a few commands to the controller via Exscript.

Basically we’re testing a bunch of IoT devices that are setup to connect to only one network. It would be very helpful to use Ansible to create the appropriate network as install/testing begins, and destroy it once that process is finished. Needless to say, that’s not a common way to use the Cisco wireless stuff.

It looks like the new network_cli connection plugin will be perfect for this once 2.3 is out.[1]

Does anyone else have access to Cisco WLCs to be able to create a module to deal with them? I wouldn’t be able to spend enough time to write an entire module from scratch–I haven’t ever written a module before, and I’m not sure I have time to learn it all now. But, I do need to make my crufty script more dynamic, fault-tolerant, and reusable, so, maybe I can use some of that effort to work with someone on such an ansible module. Any takers?

Cheers,
Jacob Floyd
Systems Admin at Theatro (theatro.com)

[1] https://www.ansible.com/blog/networking-features-in-ansible-2-3

2

Modules were commited to github in the past week that support aireos commands and aireos configuration. I’ve just started woking with them and have successfully run a couple commands on test WLCs. The support looks good and well integrated with the rest of ansible: persistent connections, ansible userid and password variables are used, lots of important functions.

Cisco WLCs commands often prompt before they complete; I’m not sure how well the new support handles that yet.

3

On what aireos version do you have this working?

Regards
Christer