In this post, I am going to cover the running of the Ansible NSX-T playbook so that you can get NSX-T deployed in your environment(s). In case you missed them, in my previous posts, I detailed how to set up your Ansible environment and configure the playbook in preparation for deploying NSX-T.

If you arrived here and want to figure it out for yourself, you can download my playbooks here.

Playbook Overview

The main playbook that you will need to run is called ‘nsxt_create_environment.yml‘, which is located in the root of the Ansible-NSXT folder.

---
## Deploys an NSX-T environment
- hosts: nsxt_managers_controllers
  connection: local
  become: yes
  gather_facts: False
  vars:
    nsxt_deployment_vcenter: "{{ mgmt_vcenter_server }}"
    nsxt_deployment_vcenter_username: "{{ mgmt_vcenter_admin_username }}"
    nsxt_deployment_vcenter_password: "{{ mgmt_vcenter_admin_password }}"
    nsxt_deployment_datacenter: "{{ mgmt_vcenter_datacenter }}"
    nsxt_deployment_cluster: "{{ mgmt_vcenter_cluster }}"
    nsxt_deployment_datastore: "{{ nsxt_datastore }}"
    nsxt_deployment_portgroup: "{{ nsxt_portgroup }}"
    nsxt_deployment_size: "{{ nsxt_default_deployment_size }}"
    nsxt_role: "{{ nsxt_default_role }}"

    compute_managers:
    - name: "{{ nsxt_compute_manager_name }}"
      host: "{{ nsxt_compute_manager_host }}"
      transport_clusters: "{{ nsxt_transport_clusters }}"

    ip_pools:
    - display_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_ip_pool_name }}"
      subnets:
      - allocation_ranges:
        - start: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_ip_pool_start }}"
          end: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_ip_pool_end }}"
        cidr: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_ip_pool_cidr }}"

    transport_zones:
    - display_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_zone_name }}"
      description: "{{ nsxt_transport_zone_desc }}"
      transport_type: "OVERLAY"
      transport_switch_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_name }}"

    uplink_profiles:
    - display_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_uplink_profile_name }}"
      teaming:
        active_list:
        - uplink_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_uplink_1 }}"
          uplink_type: PNIC
        - uplink_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_uplink_2 }}"
          uplink_type: PNIC
        policy: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_uplink_profile_policy }}"
      transport_vlan: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_uplink_profile_vlan }}"

    transport_node_profiles:
    - display_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_node_profile_name }}"
      description: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_profile_desc }}"
      host_switches:
      - host_switch_profiles:
        - name: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_uplink_profile_name }}"
          type: UplinkHostSwitchProfile
        host_switch_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_name }}"
        pnics:
        - device_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_pnic_1 }}"
          uplink_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_uplink_1 }}"
        - device_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_pnic_2 }}"
          uplink_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_uplink_2 }}"
        ip_assignment_spec:
          resource_type: StaticIpPoolSpec
          ip_pool_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_switch_ip_pool_name }}"
      transport_zone_endpoints:
      - transport_zone_name: "{{ nsxt_transport_zone_name }}"
    
  roles:
    - nsxt_deploy_ova
    - nsxt_apply_license
    - nsxt_add_compute_managers
    - nsxt_create_ip_pools
    - nsxt_create_transport_zones
    - nsxt_create_uplink_profiles
    - nsxt_create_transport_profiles
    - nsxt_configure_transport_clusters

Read more “Deploying NSX-T Using Ansible – Part 3: Running The Playbook”

In my previous post, I covered how to prepare your Ansible environment and install the VMware NSX-T modules. I also provided the details on how to install my Ansible playbooks for deploying NSX-T in your environments.

In this post, I am going to detail how to configure these playbooks to meet your environment/requirements. I have chosen to break out my variables into multiple files. This gives me the flexibility to assign values specific to a group of hosts, inherit values from a parent group and to store usernames, passwords and license information more securely, in their own Ansible Vault encrypted file.

The deployment examples that I will demonstrate include 2 sites, that each includes the following:

• A management environment at each site. This includes a vCenter Server instance with a single management cluster.
• A compute resource (CMP) environment at each site. This includes a vCenter Server instance with a single resource cluster.

I will deploy an NSX-T instance at each management cluster. These NSX-T instances will be used to provide SDN capabilities to the compute resource clusters (when I get time I’ll create a diagram!).

An overview of the playbook tree:

├── ansible.cfg
├── nsxt_create_environment.yml
├── nsxt_example_add_compute_manager.yml
├── nsxt_example_apply_license.yml
├── nsxt_example_create_ip_pools.yml
├── nsxt_example_create_transport_profiles.yml
├── nsxt_example_create_transport_zones.yml
├── nsxt_example_create_uplink_profiles.yml
├── nsxt_example_deploy_ova.yml
├── group_vars
│   ├── all
│   ├── nsxt_managers_controllers
│   ├── site_a
│   ├── site_a_cmp_nsxt
│   ├── site_b
│   └── site_b_cmp_nsxt
├── inventory
│   └── hosts
├── roles
│   ├── nsxt_add_compute_managers
│   ├── nsxt_apply_license
│   ├── nsxt_check_manager_status
│   ├── nsxt_configure_transport_clusters
│   ├── nsxt_create_ip_pools
│   ├── nsxt_create_transport_profiles
│   ├── nsxt_create_transport_zones
│   ├── nsxt_create_uplink_profiles
│   └── nsxt_deploy_ova
├── ssh_config

Read more “Deploying NSX-T Using Ansible – Part 2: Setting Up The Playbook”