Automate Mikrotik RouterOS Config Backups with Ansible

How to Backup Config on Mikrotik RouterOS with Ansible?

Maintaining a backup copy of your network appliance configuration is a good practice for all IT Professionals. You could automate this process for Mikrotik RouterOS appliances using Ansible. I'm going to show you a live Playbook with some simple Ansible code. I'm Luca Berton and welcome to today's episode of Ansible Pilot.

See also: Automate Dell EMC DNOS 10 Backups with Ansible Playbook

Ansible Backup Config on Mikrotik RouterOS

> community.routeros: Modules for MikroTik RouterOS

Let's talk about the Ansible collection community.routeros. The full name is community.routeros, which means that is an Ansible Network Collection designed to interact with Mikrotik RouterOS devices. It contains modules for MikroTik RouterOS.

Links

• Community.Routeros

## Playbook

How to Backup Config on Mikrotik RouterOS with Ansible Playbook. I'm going to show how to back up the current configuration of a Mikrotik RouterOS connecting via SSH protocol using the username and password credentials and save it to a file with the device name and timestamp.

code

• inventory

[mikrotik]
192.168.88.2
[mikrotik:vars]
ansible_user=luca
ansible_password=mysecretpassword123
ansible_connection=ansible.netcommon.network_cli
ansible_network_os=community.routeros.routeros
ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3
ansible_command_timeout=120

• backup_mikrotik.yml

---
- name: Backup Mikrotik
  hosts: mikrotik
  gather_facts: false
  vars:
    backup_dir: "/home/luca/network/backup"
  tasks:
    - name: Export
      ansible.builtin.shell: >-
        sshpass -p '{{ ansible_password }}' ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no {{ ansible_user }}@{{ inventory_hostname }} /export
      register: export
      delegate_to: localhost
- name: Backup
      ansible.builtin.copy:
        content: "{{ export.stdout }}"
        dest: "{{ backup_dir }}/{{ inventory_hostname }}_config.{{ lookup('pipe', 'date +%Y-%m-%d@%H:%M:%S') }}"
      when: export is defined
      delegate_to: localhost

• requirements.yml

---
collections:
  - name: community.routeros

requirements setup

$ ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml 
Starting galaxy collection install process
Process install dependency map
Starting collection install process
Downloading https://galaxy.ansible.com/download/community-routeros-2.0.0.tar.gz to /home/luca/.ansible/tmp/ansible-local-47086a9aez7_s/tmpqz_6puy_/community-routeros-2.0.0-hlve2za9
Installing 'community.routeros:2.0.0' to '/home/luca/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/community/routeros'
community.routeros:2.0.0 was installed successfully
'ansible.netcommon:3.0.0' is already installed, skipping.
'ansible.utils:2.6.1' is already installed, skipping.
luca@luca01:~/network$ ansible-galaxy collection list
# /home/luca/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections
Collection         Version
------------------ -------
ansible.netcommon  3.0.0  
ansible.utils      2.6.1  
community.routeros 2.0.0

execution

$ ansible-playbook -i inventory backup_mikrotik.yml
PLAY [Backup Mikrotik] ****************************************************************************
TASK [Export] *************************************************************************************
changed: [192.168.88.2 -> localhost]
TASK [Backup] *************************************************************************************
changed: [192.168.88.2 -> localhost]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
192.168.88.2               : ok=2    changed=2    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

before execution

luca@luca01:~/network$ pwd
/home/luca/network
luca@luca01:~/network$ ls
backup_mikrotik.yml  inventory requirements.yml
luca@luca01:~/network$ ansible --version
ansible [core 2.12.4]
  config file = /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = ['/home/luca/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/ansible
  ansible collection location = /home/luca/.ansible/collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections
  executable location = /usr/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.8.10 (default, Mar 15 2022, 12:22:08) [GCC 9.4.0]
  jinja version = 2.10.1
  libyaml = True

after execution

$ ls -al backup
total 16
drwxrwxr-x 2 luca luca 4096 May  5 15:29 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 luca luca 4096 May  5 15:28 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 luca luca 2076 May  5 15:28 192.168.88.2_config.2022-05-05@15:28:55
-rw-rw-r-- 1 luca luca 2076 May  5 15:29 192.168.88.2_config.2022-05-05@15:29:19
luca@luca01:~/network$ file backup/*
backup/192.168.88.2_config.2022-05-05@15:28:55: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators
backup/192.168.88.2_config.2022-05-05@15:29:19: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators

code with ❤️ in GitHub

See also: Backup Dell EMC DNOS 6 Configs with Ansible Playbook

Conclusion

Now you know how to Backup Config on Mikrotik RouterOS with Ansible.

Related Articles

• Ansible Galaxy guide • Ansible conditional patterns • the Ansible inventory deep-dive