Backing up the configs of our F5 BIG-IP appliances was my first Itential automation. The goal was to backup about 100 F5 BIG-IPs weekly to a file server.
#
# Playbook to fetch backup file from network device
#
# Steps:
# 1. Fetch file cs_backup.ucs from network device to local file
# 2. Copy local file to backup server
---
- name: F5 UCS Backup Fetch
hosts: "{{network_device|default('all')}}"
connection: local
vars:
fetch_flat: true
tasks:
- name: TASK - Set Facts
set_fact:
provider:
server: "{{ ansible_host }}"
user: "{{ user }}"
password: "{{ password }}"
validate_certs: no
f5_host: "{{ ansible_host }}"
src_filename: "cs_backup.ucs"
local_filename: "/data01/ucs_backup_copy/{{ network_device }}.ucs"
- name: TASK - Save UCS backup on Active F5
connection: local
bigip_ucs_fetch:
provider: "{{ provider }}"
src: "{{ src_filename }}"
dest: "{{ local_filename }}"
ignore_errors: yes
register: result
- name: TASK - Set Facts
set_fact:
remote_filename: "/tftpboot/F5-Backups/{{ network_device }}-{{ ansible_date_time.iso8601_basic_short }}.ucs"
- name: TASK - Copy to remote
local_action: command sshpass -p "{{ password }}" scp -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -v "{{ local_filename }}" "{{ username }}"@"{{ backup_server }}":"{{ remote_filename }}"
- name: TASK - Remove local backup file
local_action: file path={{ local_filename }} state=absentItential loops through all of the F5 devices and runs this ansible playbook on each one. The ansible playbook runs the bigip_ucs_fetch module on the F5, which does the actual configuration backup. Then we take this backup file and copy it to secure storage.
Itential keeps track of successes and failures and sends an email with the results of all of the backup jobs.