Ansible on SONiC Automation Complete Guide

By Luca Berton · Published 2024-01-01 · Category: installation

Automate SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud) switches with Ansible: sonic.sonic collection, ConfigDB, BGP/EVPN, image upgrades, drift checks.

SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud) is the open-source NOS originated by Microsoft and now governed by the Linux Foundation. It runs on white-box switches from Edgecore, Celestica, Mellanox/NVIDIA, Dell, and others. SONiC's configuration lives in ConfigDB (Redis), which Ansible drives via the sonic.sonic and dellemc.enterprise_sonic collections plus sonic-cli/REST. This is the master Ansible guide for SONiC.

SONiC release facts

Item	Value
Releases	202311, 202405, 202411 (community)
Vendor builds	Dell Enterprise SONiC, NVIDIA SONiC, Edgecore SONiC
Programmability	sonic-cli, REST/gNMI, ConfigDB
Underlying OS	Debian-based

Ansible-core compatibility

Use ansible-core 2.18 LTS with dellemc.enterprise_sonic >= 2.5 (Dell variant) or sonic.sonic upstream collection.

Inventory

[sonic]
sonic-leaf01 ansible_host=10.30.0.1
sonic-leaf02 ansible_host=10.30.0.2

[sonic:vars]
ansible_network_os=dellemc.enterprise_sonic.sonic
ansible_connection=ansible.netcommon.httpapi
ansible_httpapi_use_ssl=true
ansible_httpapi_validate_certs=false
ansible_user=admin
ansible_password='{{ vault_sonic_password }}'

Configuration backup

- name: Backup SONiC ConfigDB
  hosts: sonic
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: Save running-config
      ansible.netcommon.cli_command:
        command: "show runningconfiguration all"
      register: rc

    - name: Persist backup locally
      ansible.builtin.copy:
        content: "{{ rc.stdout }}"
        dest: "./backups/{{ inventory_hostname }}-{{ ansible_date_time.iso8601_basic_short }}.json"
      delegate_to: localhost

BGP configuration

- name: Configure BGP on SONiC leaf
  hosts: sonic
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: BGP global + neighbors
      dellemc.enterprise_sonic.sonic_bgp:
        config:
          - bgp_as: 65001
            router_id: "{{ rid }}"
            log_neighbor_changes: true
            timers:
              holdtime: 30
              keepalive_interval: 10
        state: merged

    - name: Neighbors
      dellemc.enterprise_sonic.sonic_bgp_neighbors:
        config:
          - bgp_as: 65001
            neighbors:
              - neighbor: 10.0.0.10
                remote_as:
                  peer_as: 65000
        state: merged

EVPN-VXLAN

- name: EVPN-VXLAN on SONiC
  hosts: sonic
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: VXLAN tunnel
      dellemc.enterprise_sonic.sonic_vxlans:
        config:
          - name: vtep1
            source_ip: 10.0.1.1
            evpn_nvo: nvo1
            vlan_map:
              - vni: 10010
                vlan: 10
        state: merged

Image upgrade orchestration

- name: Upgrade SONiC image
  hosts: sonic
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: Install new image
      ansible.netcommon.cli_command:
        command: "sudo sonic-installer install --yes /tmp/sonic-broadcom-202411.bin"
      register: install
      changed_when: "'Installed' in install.stdout"

    - name: Set next-boot
      ansible.netcommon.cli_command:
        command: "sudo sonic-installer set-next-boot 202411"

    - name: Reboot
      ansible.builtin.reboot:
        reboot_timeout: 600

Drift detection

- name: Drift on SONiC
  hosts: sonic
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: Pull running config
      ansible.netcommon.cli_command:
        command: show runningconfiguration all
      register: rc

    - name: Compare to intended
      ansible.builtin.assert:
        that: rc.stdout == lookup('ansible.builtin.file', 'intended/' ~ inventory_hostname ~ '.json')

Best practices

Use the vendor-specific collection (Dell, NVIDIA, Edgecore) when available — feature coverage is better than upstream sonic.sonic.
Pre-stage SONiC images on an internal HTTP cache; do not pull from the public bin server in production.
Validate ConfigDB JSON locally with jsonschema before push.
Pair SONiC with Telegraf/Prometheus for telemetry; Ansible handles config, telemetry handles state.

Conclusion

SONiC + Ansible democratizes data-center switch automation across hardware vendors. The dellemc.enterprise_sonic and sonic.sonic collections provide declarative resource modules, while sonic-installer flows can be orchestrated for in-place image upgrades.

Category: installation

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