Wired Intelligent Edge

I am trying to automate the process of provisioning Aruba switches. I have currently got a DHCP server pushing options 66/67 to point to a TFTP server and exported configuration filename. When I erase the config on the switch and reboot, the switch pulls the config from TFTP and updates itself around ~2 mins after booting.

I am reading about DHCP options 43 and 60, but I am seeing it mostly talked about in regards to Aruba APs, and I'm not really sure how it all works. Am I able to have multiple 'base-template' configs on my TFTP server, and have different switches pull different templates based on how they identify to the DHCP server? Is this possible?

I guess I want to have one solid base template, that every switch across the network will have. Just generic common configurations. Then, have more specialized configurations automatically applied to the varying device models. Then, 'manually' use something like Ansible or Python to automate modifying the configurations for any deployment-specific configurations as needed.

The end goal is to automate switch provisioning... Is this the right way I should be trying, or is there a better option I'm not seeing? I'm getting access to the AirWave server sometime soon for testing, to see if that helps at all. I want to be able to take a switch out of the box, plug it into the provisioning VLAN, and have it do it's thing (at least get all the generic configs out of the way).

Thanks in advance for any help!

Let me suggest multiple options here.

Airwave or Central(cloud service) does ZTP for ArubaOS Switches. There is an option to create configuration for each group and when switch comes up, it gets right config. In Central, all inventory comes up automatically and there is an option to assign devices to each group even before switch is deployed. When switch comes up, it downloads the config depends on the group it assigned to. No automation effort required when using Airwave or Central.

If you are still interested in automating ZTP using DHCP option, attached step by step guide to configure DHCP option for switches. In this case, when switch gets DHCP IP, redirected to TFTP server and then download config file. There is no option for customized template push based on IP of switch. All switches of same type gets that configuration.

But once the switch comes up with base configuration using DHCP option, use Ansible/Python along with some templating tool(eg: jinja) and push specific configuration using REST API.

All Aruba switches support REST APIs. Hope this helps.

Attachment(s)

DHCP_Image_Config_Download.docx   297 KB 1 version