NETSCOUT^® AED Ansible Modules

This repository contains a collection of Ansible modules that allow you to configure and manage NETSCOUT Arbor Edge Defense (AED) appliances with Ansible.

Prerequisites

To use the modules in this repository, you need:

• Ansible
• One or more AED appliances with AED software, version 6.2 or greater
• One of the following types of login credentials for each AED appliance:
  • username and password
  • an API token

Installation instructions

Clone this repository to the machine on which Ansible is installed.

Use the aed role from this repository as is or copy it into your existing playbook directory structure.

The /roles/aed/ directory is an Ansible role for AED appliances. Per the standard for Ansible roles, it contains the following subdirectories:

• aed/defaults/: The default values for variables that you must set to use the aed role.
• aed/httpapi_plugins/: The httpapi connection plugins that you need to connect to the AED appliances.
• aed/library/: The Ansible modules for performing tasks on the AED appliances.
• aed/module_utils/: The common Python modules that the Ansible modules use.
• aed/tasks/: The tasks to perform on the AED appliances.

Due to a possible bug in Ansible, you must set the httpapi_plugins option in your Ansible config file to the httpapi_plugins/ subdirectory in the aed role. For an example of how to set this option, see the ansible.cfg file in this repository.

IMPORTANT: If you do not perform this operation before you use the aed role, Ansible will not load the AED httpapi plugin correctly and a "socket_path does not exist or cannot be found" error may occur.

Add the AED appliances to your inventory. The hosts.example file in this repository contains some examples of how to set the login credentials:

• For password-based authentication, set the ansible_user and ansible_password variables.
• For API token-based authentication, set the ansible_httpapi_aed_api_token variable.

To customize the aed role, create an aed/tasks/main.yaml file, and add the tasks to perform on the AED. The example_tasks/ directory contains some examples of AED tasks.

IMPORTANT: Do not copy the tasks verbatim as they are meant to be example use cases only.

If necessary, create a new aed/vars/main.yaml file to modify the default variables set in aed/defaults/main.yaml. In most cases, this should not be necessary.

You can now add the aed role to your main playbook. The playbook.yaml file that is included in this repository provides a simple example of how to use this role.