Ansible: How to take CISCO switch backup?

Device configuration backup is vital task for IT people especially those who are working as a administrator. To make this task easier i have create Ansible playbook for CISCO switches. Below i will show how this playbook actually works.

vim /etc/ansible/hosts

# Insert below lines at the end of the file.

[cisco]
SW-148 ansible_host=192.168.11.148 ansible_network_os=ios
:wq

cd /etc/ansible/playbooks

vim cisco-sw-bkp.yaml

---
- hosts: all
  gather_facts: true
  connection: network_cli
  become: yes

  tasks:
  - name: Show Running Configuration
    ios_command:
      host: "{{ cisco }}"
      commands:
        - show run
    register: config
    
  - name: Save output to /etc/ansible/backups
    copy:
     content: "{{ config.stdout[0] }}"
     dest: "/etc/ansible/backups/show_run_config_{{ inventory_hostname }}.txt"

:wq

Run The Playbook

# ansible-playbook -l cisco playbooks/cisco.yaml -k -u admin

If everything is ok. You will get a backup file in /etc/ansible/backups/ location named as show_run_config_192.168.11.148.txt

If you do not want to type password during playbook execution you have to modify your playbook as like below:

# vim /etc/ansible/hosts

[cisco]
SW-148 ansible_host=192.168.11.148 ansible_network_os=ios ansible_ssh_user=admin  ansible_ssh_pass="admin" 

Then run the playbook

# ansible-playbook -l cisco playbooks/cisco.yaml