Cisco ACI automation with UCS Director

sharon saadon

5 years ago

Automation for Cisco ACI using Cisco’s UCS Director

In the above example it’s UCSD’s self service portal with 4 workflows (each users group can have a different portal)

New segment (BD & EPG)
Add physical server (single port)
Add physical server (port-channel)
Add physical server (VPC)

Demo:

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New segment workflow

This workflow built from tasks that Creates BD, Subnet, EPG, associate EPG to virtual domain and add contracts (Provider & Consumer)

Running the workflow will ask this user inputs

UCSD for advanced users

In some other workflow i had to update EPG contract’s label, I did not found a task for that in UCSD built in tasks, So i created a REST API workflow as a compound workflow and used it in a different workflow to send REST API calls to the APIC in order to configure the label,
I also had to get node ID from an interface object (from user’s input table) so i used a javascript task in order to parse it

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It is possible to run UCSD workflows from VMware VRA via REST API

In this example i am running UCSD’s “New segment” workflow from VRA at our lab, (VRA ask for segment name & IP and then VRO run a rest API call to UCSD with the user’s input data

VRO Rest API call:

The VRO script:


var operationUrl = "rest?formatType=json&amp;opName=userAPISubmitWorkflowServiceRequest&amp;opData=%7Bparam0:'New_Segment',param1:%7B'list':[%7B'name':'Name','value':'"+NetworkName+"'%7D,%7B'name':'IP%20address','value':'"+IPAddr+"'%7D]%7D,param2:-1%7D";

System.log("Host: " + restHost + ", operation: " + operationUrl + ", Request Type: " + requestType.name);

var request = restHost.createRequest(requestType, operationUrl, requestContent);
request.setHeader("X-Cloupia-Request-Key","0C3B2DCBCB294ED681BD988BA520889E");
System.log("request: " + request.fullUrl);
var response = request.execute();
System.log("response: " + response.contentAsString);
result = new Properties();
result.put("statusCode", response.statusCode);
result.put("contentLength", response.contentLength);
result.put("headers", response.getAllHeaders());
result.put("contentAsString", response.contentAsString);

var operationUrl = "rest?formatType=json&opName=userAPISubmitWorkflowServiceRequest&opData=%7Bparam0:'New_Segment',param1:%7B'list':[%7B'name':'Name','value':'"+NetworkName+"'%7D,%7B'name':'IP%20address','value':'"+IPAddr+"'%7D]%7D,param2:-1%7D";

System.log("Host: " + restHost + ", operation: " + operationUrl + ", Request Type: " + requestType.name);

var request = restHost.createRequest(requestType, operationUrl, requestContent);

request.setHeader("X-Cloupia-Request-Key","0C3B2DCBCB294ED681BD988BA520889E");

System.log("request: " + request.fullUrl);

var response = request.execute();

System.log("response: " + response.contentAsString);

result = new Properties();

result.put("statusCode", response.statusCode);

result.put("contentLength", response.contentLength);

result.put("headers", response.getAllHeaders());

result.put("contentAsString", response.contentAsString);

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Summery

Building flows with UCSD are not so user friendly, But once you build it its works fine
Most of daily ACI operation are preconfigured at UCSD, so you can do almost everything without scripting
the User’s Self-service portal is friendly and
rollbacks are very easy (1 mouse click)

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