f5-backup-ansible

f5-backup-ansible.yaml

Overview

An Ansible Playbook to backup BIG-IP devices.

It will create, download and remove an UCS archive from one or more BIG-IP devices.

Main capabilities:

- Does not fail immediately when the backup of one the BIG-IP device fails (will continue running the backup for all devices).
- Record in a log file all backups that failed (including the reason of why the backup failed). 

Preparing the environment

1. Create a Python3 virtual environment:

python3 -m venv virtualenv

2. Activate the virtual environment:

source virtualenv/bin/activate

3. Install Ansible:

pip install ansible

4. Install F5 Ansible Imperative Collection:

ansible-galaxy collection install f5networks.f5_modules

Configuring the environment

5. Configuring variables:

vim vars/config-vars.yaml
# The base directory in which the UCS archives will be stored. 
# Inside this directory, you must create a directory for each 
# BIG-IP device listed in your inventory. 
ucs_basedir: "/opt/f5-backup/backup"

# The log file in which you can find which backup tasks failed. 
logfile: "/opt/f5-backup/logs/f5-backup-ansible.log"

# A internal state file used to track if any backup task failed. 
statefile: "/opt/f5-backup/f5-backup-ansible.state"

6. Creating directories:

mkdir -p /opt/f5-backup/{backup,logs}

7. Configuring the Ansible inventory:

vim inventory/hosts
[bigips]
bigip1
bigip2
bigip3
bigip4

[local]
localhost ansible_connection=local

8. Create a host_vars file for each BIG-IP device:

vim inventory/host_vars/bigip1
ansible_host: A.A.A.A
ansible_user: admin 
ansible_pass: admin

vim inventory/host_vars/bigip2
ansible_host: B.B.B.B
ansible_user: admin 
ansible_pass: admin

vim inventory/host_vars/bigip3
ansible_host: C.C.C.C
ansible_user: admin 
ansible_pass: admin

vim inventory/host_vars/bigip4
ansible_host: D.D.D.D
ansible_user: admin 
ansible_pass: admin

9. Create the backup directory for each BIG-IP device:

mkdir -p /opt/f5-backup/backup/{bigip1,bigip2,bigip3,bigip4}

Running the backup

10. Running the F5 Backup Ansible playbook:

ansible-playbook playbooks/f5-backup-ansible.yaml