ACIDoc will document pertitent information about the configuration of a Cisco ACI fabric into Spreadsheet format, it turns out sometimes that's still the best way to pass information around.
The contents and structure of the outputed format is very easy to customize of the output is easily changed by modifying the config.yml file
pip install -r requirements.txt
virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
Everything in ACI is an object, every object is instantiated from a class which defines properties of the object.
Using the ACI REST API you can query for all objects (and their properties) of a given class.
To construct a spreadsheet, this utility creates a tab for each class query, where the columns are properties which you are interested in, and each row is an instance of that class
First we need to authenticate to the APIC properly, we use the acitoolkit library to help with this.
The easiest way is to set up your credentials is by adding some environment variables. If you are a mac user it would look something like this.
my-macbook-prompt ✗ export APIC_URL=https://myapic
my-macbook-prompt ✗ export APIC_LOGIN=someuser
my-macbook-prompt ✗ export APIC_PASSWORD=somepass
If you don't want to set these, the utility will also prompt the user for the required connection information at runtime.. e.g.
my-macbook ✗ python aci-doc.py
APIC login username: admin
APIC URL: https://10.94.140.72
APIC Password:
Connected to ACI
Start by defining what you want the output spreadsheet to be named.
filename: aci-doc.xlsx
Next define the tabs, classes, and properties that you are interested in documenting.
e.g Tenants and Applications
tabs:
# sheet name
Tenants:
# class query
class: fvTenant
# create a column for each of these properties
properties: [name, dn]
Would produce the following sheet named Tenants
| name | dn |
|---|---|
| tenant1 | uni/tn-tenant1 |
You can optionally customize the header names for the sheet. If not specified the column name will be the property name.
Applications:
class: fvAp
# optionally you may customize the header name
headers: [Name, Distinguished Name]
properties: [name, dn]
Would produce the following sheet named Applications
| Name | Distinguished Name |
|---|---|
| app1 | uni/tn-tenant1/ap-app1 |
The config.yml also contains several other common classes as a starting point.
Generating your spreadsheet is a matter of running
my-macbook-prompt ✗ python aci-doc.py
Connected to ACI
depending on your configuration, this could take a little while...
Collecting information for Switches
Collecting information for Subnets
Collecting information for Applications
Collecting information for Tenants
Collecting information for Interface Errors
Collecting information for Topology
Everything in ACI is an object, those objects be queried for properties and documented.
For full information on the ACI Model please visit Cisco DevNet