# Infoblox Guide

Topics

- Infoblox Guide
  - Prerequisites
  - Credentials and authenticating
  - NIOS lookup plugins
    - Retrieving all network views
    - Retrieving a host record
  - Use cases with modules
    - Configuring an IPv4 network
    - Creating a host record
    - Creating a forward DNS zone
    - Creating a reverse DNS zone
  - Dynamic inventory script

This guide describes how to use Ansible with the Infoblox Network Identity Operating System (NIOS). With Ansible integration, you can use Ansible playbooks to automate Infoblox Core Network Services for IP address management (IPAM), DNS, and inventory tracking.

You can review simple example tasks in the documentation for any of the NIOS modules or look at the Use cases with modules section for more elaborate examples. See the Infoblox website for more information on the Infoblox product.

Note

You can retrieve most of the example playbooks used in this guide from the network-automation/infoblox_ansible GitHub repository.

## Prerequisites

Before using Ansible `nios` modules with Infoblox, you must install the `infoblox-client` on your Ansible control node:

    $ sudo pip install infoblox-client

Note

You need an NIOS account with the WAPI feature enabled to use Ansible with Infoblox.

## Credentials and authenticating

To use Infoblox `nios` modules in playbooks, you need to configure the credentials to access your Infoblox system. The examples in this guide use credentials stored in `<playbookdir>/group_vars/nios.yml`. Replace these values with your Infoblox credentials:

    ---
    nios_provider:
      host: 192.0.0.2
      username: admin
      password: ansible

## NIOS lookup plugins

Ansible includes the following lookup plugins for NIOS:

- nios Uses the Infoblox WAPI API to fetch NIOS specified objects, for example network views, DNS views, and host records.
- nios_next_ip Provides the next available IP address from a network. You’ll see an example of this in Creating a host record.
- nios_next_network - Returns the next available network range for a network-container.

You must run the NIOS lookup plugins locally by specifying `connection: local`. See lookup plugins for more detail.

### Retrieving all network views

To retrieve all network views and save them in a variable, use the set_fact module with the nios lookup plugin:

    ---
    - hosts: nios
      connection: local
      tasks:
        - name: fetch all networkview objects
          set_fact:
            networkviews: "{{ lookup('nios', 'networkview', provider=nios_provider) }}"

        - name: check the networkviews
          debug:
            var: networkviews

### Retrieving a host record

To retrieve a set of host records, use the `set_fact` module with the `nios` lookup plugin and include a filter for the specific hosts you want to retrieve:

    ---
    - hosts: nios
      connection: local
      tasks:
        - name: fetch host leaf01
          set_fact:
             host: "{{ lookup('nios', 'record:host', filter={'name': 'leaf01.ansible.com'}, provider=nios_provider) }}"

        - name: check the leaf01 return variable
          debug:
            var: host

        - name: debug specific variable (ipv4 address)
          debug:
            var: host.ipv4addrs[0].ipv4addr

        - name: fetch host leaf02
          set_fact:
            host: "{{ lookup('nios', 'record:host', filter={'name': 'leaf02.ansible.com'}, provider=nios_provider) }}"

        - name: check the leaf02 return variable
          debug:
            var: host

If you run this `get_host_record.yml` playbook, you should see results similar to the following:

    $ ansible-playbook get_host_record.yml

    PLAY [localhost] ***************************************************************************************

    TASK [fetch host leaf01] ******************************************************************************
    ok: [localhost]

    TASK [check the leaf01 return variable] *************************************************************
    ok: [localhost] => {
    < ...output shortened...>
        "host": {
            "ipv4addrs": [
                {
                    "configure_for_dhcp": false,
                    "host": "leaf01.ansible.com",
                }
            ],
            "name": "leaf01.ansible.com",
            "view": "default"
        }
    }

    TASK [debug specific variable (ipv4 address)] ******************************************************
    ok: [localhost] => {
        "host.ipv4addrs[0].ipv4addr": "192.168.1.11"
    }

    TASK [fetch host leaf02] ******************************************************************************
    ok: [localhost]

    TASK [check the leaf02 return variable] *************************************************************
    ok: [localhost] => {
    < ...output shortened...>
        "host": {
            "ipv4addrs": [
                {
                    "configure_for_dhcp": false,
                    "host": "leaf02.example.com",
                    "ipv4addr": "192.168.1.12"
                }
            ],
        }
    }

    PLAY RECAP ******************************************************************************************
    localhost                  : ok=5    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0

The output above shows the host record for `leaf01.ansible.com` and `leaf02.ansible.com` that were retrieved by the `nios` lookup plugin. This playbook saves the information in variables which you can use in other playbooks. This allows you to use Infoblox as a single source of truth to gather and use information that changes dynamically. See Using Variables for more information on using Ansible variables. See the nios examples for more data options that you can retrieve.

You can access these playbooks at Infoblox lookup playbooks.

## Use cases with modules

You can use the `nios` modules in tasks to simplify common Infoblox workflows. Be sure to set up your NIOS credentials before following these examples.

### Configuring an IPv4 network

To configure an IPv4 network, use the nios_network module:

    ---
    - hosts: nios
      connection: local
      tasks:
        - name: Create a network on the default network view
          nios_network:
            network: 192.168.100.0/24
            comment: sets the IPv4 network
            options:
              - name: domain-name
                value: ansible.com
            state: present
            provider: "{{nios_provider}}"

Notice the last parameter, `provider`, uses the variable `nios_provider` defined in the `group_vars/` directory.

### Creating a host record

To create a host record named leaf03.ansible.com on the newly-created IPv4 network:

    ---
    - hosts: nios
      connection: local
      tasks:
        - name: configure an IPv4 host record
          nios_host_record:
            name: leaf03.ansible.com
            ipv4addrs:
              - ipv4addr:
                  "{{ lookup('nios_next_ip', '192.168.100.0/24', provider=nios_provider)[0] }}"
            state: present
    provider: "{{nios_provider}}"

Notice the IPv4 address in this example uses the nios_next_ip lookup plugin to find the next available IPv4 address on the network.

### Creating a forward DNS zone

To configure a forward DNS zone use, the `nios_zone` module:

    ---
    - hosts: nios
      connection: local
      tasks:
        - name: Create a forward DNS zone called ansible-test.com
          nios_zone:
            name: ansible-test.com
            comment: local DNS zone
            state: present
            provider: "{{ nios_provider }}"

### Creating a reverse DNS zone

To configure a reverse DNS zone:

    ---
    - hosts: nios
      connection: local
      tasks:
        - name: configure a reverse mapping zone on the system using IPV6 zone format
          nios_zone:
            name: 100::1/128
            zone_format: IPV6
            state: present
            provider: "{{ nios_provider }}"

## Dynamic inventory script

You can use the Infoblox dynamic inventory script to import your network node inventory with Infoblox NIOS. To gather the inventory from Infoblox, you need two files:

- infoblox.yaml - A file that specifies the NIOS provider arguments and optional filters.
- infoblox.py - The python script that retrieves the NIOS inventory.

To use the Infoblox dynamic inventory script:

1. Download the `infoblox.yaml` file and save it in the `/etc/ansible` directory.
2. Modify the `infoblox.yaml` file with your NIOS credentials.
3. Download the `infoblox.py` file and save it in the `/etc/ansible/hosts` directory.
4. Change the permissions on the `infoblox.py` file to make the file an executable:

    $ sudo chmod +x /etc/ansible/hosts/infoblox.py

You can optionally use `./infoblox.py --list` to test the script. After a few minutes, you should see your Infoblox inventory in JSON format. You can explicitly use the Infoblox dynamic inventory script as follows:

    $ ansible -i infoblox.py all -m ping

You can also implicitly use the Infoblox dynamic inventory script by including it in your inventory directory (`etc/ansible/hosts` by default). See Working With Dynamic Inventory for more details.

See also

Infoblox website
  The Infoblox website
Infoblox and Ansible Deployment Guide
  The deployment guide for Ansible integration provided by Infoblox.
Infoblox Integration in Ansible 2.5
  Ansible blog post about Infoblox.
Ansible NIOS modules
  The list of supported NIOS modules, with examples.
Infoblox Ansible Examples
  Infoblox example playbooks.