Collecting Device Configurations

The netlab collect command collects device configurations using Ansible device facts modules (or an equivalent list of Ansible tasks). The configurations are stored in the specified output directory (default: config).

A single configuration file in the output directory is created for most network devices; multiple files are collected from FRR and Cumulus VX. The configuration files have a .cfg suffix unless you specify a different suffix (without the leading dot) with the --suffix parameter.

After collecting the device configurations, you can save them in a tar archive with the --tar option and clean up the working directory with the --cleanup option.

Tip

• The netlab collect command is just a thin wrapper around an Ansible playbook which uses the Ansible inventory created by the netlab create or netlab up command.

• When executed with the -i option, ‌netlab collect switches to the lab directory to execute the Ansible playbook, but stores the results within the directory from which it was executed.

Usage

usage: netlab collect [-h] [-v] [-q] [-o [OUTPUT]] [--suffix SUFFIX] [--tar TAR]
                      [--cleanup] [-i INSTANCE]

Collect device configurations

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v, --verbose         Verbose logging
  -q, --quiet           Run Ansible playbook and tar with minimum output
  -o, --output [OUTPUT]
                        Output directory (default: config)
  --suffix SUFFIX       Configure file(s) suffix (default: cfg)
  --tar TAR             Create configuration tarball
  --cleanup             Clean up config directory and modified configuration file after
                        creating tarball
  -i, --instance INSTANCE
                        Specify lab instance to collect configuration from

All other arguments are passed directly to ansible-playbook