Welcome everyone to today's session on automating VXLAN with terraform. In this session, we will run a terraform script to create a new fabric, discover switches, and set up a VRF and VXLAN network using Terraform. After.00:05The script finishes, we will verify the result via Cisco Nexus dashboard GUI.00:20Here's today's agenda for this session. We will cover Cisco Nexus dashboard, then terraform, and finally a short demo, please. Cisco Nexus Dashboard is a centralized platform for automating, provisioning, managing, and monitoring data center networks.00:26It offers a single pane to oversee physical virtual, and cloud fabric environments. Core features, unified management, automation and orchestration, advanced analytics, AI, and sustainability. Key built in services, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric controller, NDFC, Cisco netf.00:44Nexus Dashboard Insights, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator.01:04Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool by hashicorp that enables you to automate and manage cloud resources using human readable config files. Instead of using cloud consoles to spin up servers or databases, you write code to precisely define your infrastructure's desired state, features, reusable state management.01:08And modular design with version control and traceability. Here is the topology we will use for our demo today. We are going to use six devices for our demo and connections have been made to the devices as shown in the diagram. Now let's jump to the demo.01:26Before running the terraform script, please ensure Terraform is installed on your system. If Terraform is not installed, please install it on your machine. If Terraform is installed, you can verify it in the terminal by entering the Terraform version command. If installed, it will show the exact terraform version number.01:46Also ensure the Terraform NDFC provider is installed and that it is available. After verifying all prerequisites, we need to create our script now. The script will generate the fabric, identify the switches, and configure VRF and VXLAN networking.02:05Now let's review our script, which we plan to run to carry out our tasks. As shown in the script we built, 1st we must set our username and password along with the URL we use to access the Nexus dashboard. Once these fields are populated, our 1st step will be to create the fabric.02:21To do that, we need to specify the fabric and BGP autonomous system number we want to use in our setup. Once fabric creation is complete, we move to the next step of discovering our switches. This is seed switch discovery. Within the demo environment, you must provide a username and password to discover the switches. The time required for.02:38This step varies with the number of switches present.02:58After discovery finishes, assign the appropriate role to each switch. In this instance, 198.18.4.101 is a leaf switch. So the script assigns the leaf role to that device. Similarly for the rest, if the switches, you can assign the spine border and border gateway roles as appropriate.03:01Once our switch discovery is complete, the next step is to create the VRF. Here specify the VRF name, VRF ID, VLAN ID, and VLAN name in this part of the script. Configuration parameters can vary in your environment, thus choose values accordingly for each parameter as applicable. Once VRF creation is complete.03:21The next step is to create the VXLAN network.03:41In this step, specify the network name, network ID, VRF name, VLAN ID, VNI, and gateway IP address. Since this is a layer three VXLAN network set the layer three options to true and finally specify the VLAN name you will use. Configuration parameters may vary. Choose the values carefully.03:45After the EV Vaxland network is created, deploy the full configuration. After this step, verify that the terraform scripted configuration is clearly visible within the NDFC GUI. When the script is ready, begin executing it step by step now.04:07In step one, please perform only fabric deployment now. After script execution completes, we will confirm it via GUI. As you can clearly see, the step execution is completed. Now verify by logging into our Nexus dashboard to see whether the fabric appears online. We are logged into our Cisco nexus dashboard.04:23Dashboard and can see the fabric has been created. Now let's move to the next step of finding the switches. Now that the step one is complete and our fabric has been successfully created, now we need to perform the discovery of switches.04:43The switch discovery takes time based on the number of switches we are trying to discover. Please note that during the execution, there will be a message on the screen, still modifying. This is not an error, device discovery runs in the background.04:55After the discovery completes, you will receive a message that the apply has completed. Now, once the script execution is finished, please go to the Nexus dashboard to view the switches. Please click on the fabric created in step one and then go to inventory. As we can see, the switches have been discovered and the roles we assigned to these switches in our script.05:10Have been assigned to them.05:30Now let's move to the next step of creating VRF. Now that switch discovery has been completed and we have verified it from Nexus dashboard that switches are available, we will execute the VRF creation via the script. Once the script finishes, we will confirm that the VRF is visible on our Nexus dashboard.05:32The script has finished and now let's verify the VRF from the Nexus dashboard. From the fabric created, go to segmentation security and choose the VRF option. We will be able to see the VRF with the parameters we specified in the script. Now let's proceed to the next step in creating the VXLAN network.05:51After the VRF creation is complete, we need to start building the VXLAN network right now. Next, we will run the EVX Lane network creation from the script. When the script finishes executing, we can log into the GUI and verify that the EVX lane network was created according to the parameters in our terraform script. The script execs.06:11Execution is complete and now let's verify the VSLE network from the Nexus dashboard. From the fabric that was created, go to segmentation and security and choose networks. The EVGSLE network will appear with the parameters defined in the script. After completing these steps and confirming the Nexus dashboard should.06:31Shows the configuration, proceed with the final deployment step from the script.06:51Once the script execution is fully completed, please proceed to recalculate and deploy from the Nexus dashboard GUI. Thank you for watching this video.06:57
