Data center automation dates to the early days of the mainframe, with operational efficiency topping the list of its benefits. Over the years, technologies have changed both inside and outside the data center. As a result, tools and approaches have evolved as well.
The NVIDIA NVUE Collection and Ansible aim to simplify your network automation journey by providing a comprehensive list of modules and roles for getting started with reference topologies in your environment.
NVIDIA NVUE
NVDIA User Experience (NVUE) is an object-oriented, schema-driven model of a complete hardware and software system. It provides a robust API that enables multiple interfaces to both view (show) and configure (set and unset) any element within a system running the NVUE software. NVIDIA Cumulus Linux 5.x includes the NVUE model.
NVUE is an API-first structured object model that simplifies operations. It provides a declarative command line interface (CLI) and a single configuration file. The CLI and the REST API are equivalent in functionality. You can run all management operations from either the REST API or the CLI.
Ansible
Ansible is an open-source agentless IT automation tool that automates provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, orchestration, and many other manual IT processes. It works by connecting to your automation target and pushing programs that execute instructions.
Ansible modules are included in the NVIDIA NVUE Collection to help you interact with NVIDIA devices managed by NVUE. These modules provide granularity in the configuration options and can be used to build Day 0 and Day 1 through Day N configurations.
Red Hat Ansible Certified Collections can help jump-start the process, with prebuilt roles ready to download and run. Workflows and templates can further simplify manual steps while making the process repeatable. See a list of certified partners.
NVIDIA NVUE Collection
The various NVIDIA NVUE Collection modules currently available include high-level modules and object-specific modules. Visit /nvue on GitHub to download the modules and read the instructions.
High-level modules
The high-level modules provide a wrapper around the NVUE utilities. You can leverage these to interact with the switches using the CLI or REST API commands.
nvidia.nvue.commandis a wrapper around nv command-line tool with added templating and automated dialog prompting.nvidia.nvue.apiis a wrapper around the NVUE REST API to send and retrieve NVUE configuration.
Object-specific modules
Object-specific modules are designed to work with the individual network objects and support various parameters that enable you to interact with them as required. The various modules supported include acl, bridge, router, interface, evpn, mlag, system, vrf, and VXLAN.
For REST API endpoints that aren’t covered by the object-specific modules or for subpaths within the object-specific modules (for example, /interface/<id>/qos/roce/counters), you can leverage the nvidia.nvue.api high-level module and specify the endpoint in the path parameter.
All modules other than nvidia.nvue.cli leverage the REST API to connect with the NVIDIA Cumulus Linux switch, as shown in Figure 1.
NVUE Collection roles
In general, Ansible roles provide a well-defined framework and structure for setting your tasks, variables, handlers, metadata, templates, and other files.
The roles in this collection provide several examples of a fully operationalized, automated data center in the form of playbooks. They provide a standard reference topology for various examples, such as MLAG and BGP configurations. See examples of role use.
Get started
Automation enables enterprises to improve operational efficiency, ensure compliance, and effectively manage workloads. The NVIDIA NVUE Collection provides a comprehensive list of modules and roles to simply your network automation journey and work with reference topologies in your environment.
To get started with Ansible and the NVIDIA NVUE Collection, see Data Center Network Automation with Ansible. You can also try the hands-on-lab on NVIDIA Air.
