RFE - Inventory tracking plugin (DCNE-302)

[p3ck]

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Description

• Provides inventory tracking of ACI devices, (leaf, spine, controller)

New or Affected Module(s):

plugins/inventory/aci.py

APIC version and APIC Platform

• V acisim-5.2-5c and all.

Collection versions

• cisco.aci 2.10.1

[akinross]

Hi @p3ck,

Thank you for raising the issue and PR I have added a label to it and will ask the rest of team to have a look at it. For my understanding, could you provide a bit more context and explanation on what the use case is that you are trying to solve?

[dafmendo]

hi @akinross the goal of this PR is to include is to get dynamically the information of the nodes that live behind the controller. If it is leaf or spine, hostname, to be able to list nodes behind the APIC, and its related basic information, via an inventory plugin that is part of the Ansible collection.

[akinross]

Hi @dafmendo,

I understand that dynamically getting this information is what the plugin is for. What will the information be used for, besides having it in inventory it must serve a certain task. The module aci_system is already providing this information, if the use case would be simply to list the information about nodes in the fabric. Are you intending to use the inventory data for some specific use case?

[dafmendo]

hi @akinross the module aci_system cannot be used as an inventory source for a dynamic inventory plugin. The request came from Ansible Automation Platform customers, that want to have dynamic inventory plugins capturing the data of devices behind the controllers.

[akinross]

Hi @dafmendo,

For me this still does not explain the why behind it. As per my understanding the inventory defines the managed nodes you automate towards. In the case of ACI, I would argue that almost all communication is done towards APIC(s) and that leafs and spines are not something we automate against. Thus my question of trying to understand the use case of having the devices behind the APIC available in inventory. Are they retrieving any information from these nodes? Is there some additional functionality in Ansible Automation Platform that would provide additional insights?