On May 4, 2010, at 9:25 PM, James Turnbull wrote:
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On 5/05/10 1:53 PM, Geoff Crompton wrote:
This might be a crazy idea, but it just popped into my head, and I
wanted to know if it's possible. Perhaps not possible right now, but
possible in a theoretical sense.
Is it possible that puppet could be modified to be used to manage
switches that have a command line based interface?
When I manage our Allied Telesis switches (which have a CLI similar
to
cisco IOS) I wonder if I could control it via a puppet-like node:
node 'switch-101' {
vlan { storage:
id => 1234,
untagged_ports => "3/e1, 4/e3",
tagged_ports => "1/e1-2/e48",
}
include gvrp
include stp::rstp
stp::portfast { "1/e1-e48,2/e1-48",3/e1-48": }
}
Now I know we probably can't get puppet to run on the switch, but
we can
get a host to ssh or telnet to the switch, and to download the
current
configuration of the switch.
It's feasible - you could create a type and provider that connects
to the switch and interacts with the CLI to retrieve the
configuration, manipulate it in some way (depending on how complex
the format is) and then send it back and apply it.
Obviously there would be limitations - no Factor facts and you'd
have to create a dummy node I guess because the switch wouldn't be a
real "node".
Others may have niftier ideas on how to do this - an easier
mechanism might be use Puppet's REST API to integrate with the
switches own management tool if it has an exposed API.
The way that I would implement this would basically to write a system
that read in the whole switch config, used the catalog and RAL to
compare states and write a new config, and then a hook at the end to
write the new config.
You could use the (new in 0.25) pre and post transaction hooks to
retrieve and store the switch config, and then it's just a question of
having RAL types that modify that config in some way.
Make sense?
--
When I die, I want go out just like my grandfather, in his sleep,
peaceful and quiet...not kicking and screaming like the other guys in
his car.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Luke Kanies -|- http://puppetlabs.com -|- +1(615)594-8199
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