Automate Mikrotik RouterOS Config Backups with Ansible — Video Tutorial

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. 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](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/community/routeros/index.html) ## 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 ```ini [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 ```yaml --- - 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 ```yaml --- collections: - name: community.routeros ``` requirements setup ```bash $ 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 ansi