Category Archives: xml

Cisco device configuration using Netconf

cisco, devopsnet, Netconf, nexus, Programming, xml, Yang

This blog is part of my series on Devops for Networking. In this blog, I will cover how to configure and monitor Cisco NXOS devices using Netconf. In 1 of my earlier blogs, I have provided basics of Netconf and Yang.

I have used Nexus 3k switch for my experiments below.

Netconf has the following layers:

devops8

  • Transport protocol is sshv2.
  • rpc request section contains namespace related details.
  • Operations section could be different operations like edit-config, get-config, commit, lock etc.
  • Content section contains the actual device operation in XML format. The schema for the content can either be specified in XSD format or using Yang. Cisco NXOS devices support XSD format and I will use it in this blog.

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Nexus devices CLI parsing using Python, XML and JSON

cisco, devops, json, nexus, paramiko, Programming, python, xml

This blog is part of my series on Devops for Networking. As I indicated in 1 of my earlier blog, majority of Network devices still have CLI as the only means of configuration and monitoring. CLI is not automation friendly because of obvious reasons. In the last few years, Cisco NXOS devices provides CLI output in XML and JSON format. This allows much easier ways to parse the CLI output which aids in automation. In this blog, I will cover some examples of monitoring Cisco NXOS devices using Python interface to interact with the device and get useful information.

Prerequisites:

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Cisco UCS automation using Python SDK

cisco, devops, Programming, python, UCS, xml

This blog is part of my series on Devops for Networking. In this blog, I will cover a brief overview of UCS management model, management tools and how to automate configuration and monitoring of Cisco UCS using Python SDK. UCS is Cisco’s Unified computing system that provides a tightly integrated compute, networking and storage solution.

UCS Management

Cisco UCS management information model is a hierarchical tree with each node in the tree representing either physical or logical entity. The node is referred to as MO(Managed object). Physical entities could be chassis, servers, switches and logical entities could be policies, service profiles etc. XML based interface is provided to set and get managed objects. Following picture shows a sample Management tree with Chassis, blades and adapters.

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