anyone have an APIC-EM?

[dlots]

I just learned a different team in the company is getting an APIC-EM, they will be mainly using it for automated config (http://packetpushers.net/raspberry-pi-cisco-configuration-device/) and they don't seem to know what it's really for, but it seems that we are getting it and I an not going to rock that boat!

Anyone else have one?  Have you done anything nifty with it?

[deanwebb]

Nope. We got our Prime working, here.

And I use the term "working" loosely...

[mmcgurty]

We used APIC-EM to try and push configuration for IWAN and it just didn't work correctly at all.  We got one site configured on it to work after much back and forth with the Cisco BU (hours of Cisco WebEx's with them).  We tried our second site and it would fail differently every time we tried it.  We ended up deciding to not use it.  We are evaluating some other options at the moment.

[that1guy15]

If its not possible to get your hands on one, check out Ciscos dcloud Im pretty sure they have some hands on labs with it.

dCloud is actually pretty cool for hands on with Cisco technology and the best thing is they finally opened it up to the general public.

Else you might start poking around the Cisco DevNet areas of the internet and see if there is something out their to play with.

[dlots]

Very nice to know thank you :-D

It looks like there is a very good chance we are also getting an Ansible box, at least temporally.

[mmcgurty]

Very nice to know thank you :-D

It looks like there is a very good chance we are also getting an Ansible box, at least temporally.

IMHO, I think you would be doing yourself a disservice by not looking at the Anisible route and only looking at COTS software.

[that1guy15]

Very nice to know thank you :-D

It looks like there is a very good chance we are also getting an Ansible box, at least temporally.

Nice! Once you wrap your head around the basics of Ansible its amazing! OUt of anything Im working with now Ansible is the hands down favorite.

[wintermute000]

Yep it's not terribly interesting IMO. path trace and mapping woohoo, also REST API for extracting info. It's meant as a base for future apps.
It's free so why not take a look, also dcloud.
Easy qos sounds good on paper until you look at the horror show CLI it produces. OMG.

[NetworkGroover]

Very nice to know thank you :-D

It looks like there is a very good chance we are also getting an Ansible box, at least temporally.

Nice! Once you wrap your head around the basics of Ansible its amazing! OUt of anything Im working with now Ansible is the hands down favorite.

Ansible is the shizzle....

[icecream-guy]

shizzle....

did you see pepellnjak's blog this morning....

"Ansible playbooks are a great task sequencing tool, but extraordinary clumsy when it comes to selecting data from suboptimal data structures or transforming one data structure into another."

[dlots]

I stopped going to his blog, it seems like it's usually

Blog: "Do you want to know how to do this really awesome thing?!!?"
Me:  "YES!!"
Blog: "Than just click here!!"
Me: *Click*
Blog: "You can learn how to do it for just ninety nine ninety nine ninety nine!!! THERE'S NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO BUY!!"

https://youtu.be/VXdy3U6S_SQ?t=25

They might be very good, I just don't have the $$$ for it, so why bother going to the site?

[that1guy15]

shizzle....

did you see pepellnjak's blog this morning....

"Ansible playbooks are a great task sequencing tool, but extraordinary clumsy when it comes to selecting data from suboptimal data structures or transforming one data structure into another."

Agree. Ansible does not crunch data well. It was not built for that. It was built to sequence task and push config.

Leave the data mangling for other tools. Your best bet is to use Ansible templates (jinja2) to output the data in a format you can work with. Then use other applications to work through those results.

I say this as Im building an application centered around ansible running show commands and displaying the results all pretty like on a web page. eh...

[wintermute000]

I agree 100%. That's why you have python dynamic inventory and/or just write something that outputs yaml. Speaking of ansible, my colleagues are on a course right now being taught by Jason Edelman!
That 1 guy check out ntc-ansible if you're working with show commands

[that1guy15]

I agree 100%. That's why you have python dynamic inventory and/or just write something that outputs yaml. Speaking of ansible, my colleagues are on a course right now being taught by Jason Edelman!
That 1 guy check out ntc-ansible if you're working with show commands

I was wondering why he is in AUS. Had a call with him today. Im meeting him and team next week for a project we are doing with them. Great dude.

Yeah I do all my show commands with ntc_command using TextFSM. Swapping from the Ansible native doubled the response time of my playbooks almost. But the returned structured data from ntc_command is awesome. Been adding commands and modifying his TextFSM as well.

Fun stuff!!

[Ctrl Z]

I got my hands on APIC-EM with the IWAN app for an IWAN deployment. It was a horrible mess at the time, about 1.5 years ago. I've been following the release notes and might upgrade to the latest version and play around with it again soon.