Cohesity Server Profile Template Deployment with Cisco C240 M5/M6 LFF Intel based Servers supporting Cisco VIC 4th Gen VIC

This repository contains Ansible playbooks to configure the Cohesity Server Profiles on Cisco C240 M5/M6 LFF Intel based Servers which includes :

• Cisco UCS C240 M5/M6 standalone servers managed throuhgh Intersight

This repository can be used to automate the creation of Server Profile Template for C240 M5/M6 LFF Server. This Template is specific to Cohesity deployment with C240 directly connected to an uplink switch (eg Nexus 93180xx).

Manual deployment of Server Profile Template is detailed under https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/servers-unified-computing/ucs-c-series-rack-servers/deploy-cohesity-on-intersight-standalone.pdf

Cohesity on C240 M5/M6 (standalone , managed through Intersight) - Physical Topologies

How to execute these playbooks?

High-Level Cohesity on C240 M5/M6 Automation

Cohesity on Cisco UCS C240 M5/M6 Rack Server Automated Deployment Workflow

Set up the execution environment

To execute various ansible playbooks, a Linux based system will need to be setup as described in the CVD with the packages listed at the following pages:

• Cisco Intersight: https://galaxy.ansible.com/cisco/intersight

You might already have this collection installed.

To check whether it is installed, run: ansible-galaxy collection list
To install it, use:
ansible-galaxy collection install cisco.intersight (For Intersight Collection)

Intersight Configuration and Access Requirement

The Intersight playbooks in this repository perform following functions:

Create various policies required to setup a Server Profile Template
Create Server Profile Templates

After successfully executing the playbooks, one or many server profiles can easily derived and attached to the C240 M5/M6 nodes from Intersight dashboard.

NOTE: The playbooks do not create an organization and assume an organization (default or otherwise) has already been setup under Intersight account. The organization name must be updated in group_vars/all.yml(org_name) for successful execuation of the playbooks.

To execute the playbooks against your Intersight account, you need to complete following additional steps of creating an API key and saving the Secrets_File:

https://community.cisco.com/t5/data-center-and-cloud-documents/intersight-api-overview/ta-p/3651994

The API key and Secrets_Filename information is added to the group_vars/all.yml. The default Secrets_File value in all.yml assumes Secrets_File was copied to the same folder/directory where Ansible Playbooks were cloned (alongside inventory file).

Setting up Variables

All the variables used in this framework are defined in the following locations:

Variable that require customer inputs are part of group_vars/
Variable that do not typically require customer input (e.g. descriptions etc.) are present under role_name/defauls/main.yml.
Setup all the variables before executing the playbooks as detailed in the CVD. Intersight's pools and policies created using these playbooks are tagged with user_defined_prefix and "ansible" to easily filter the configuration.

Playbook Execution Commands

Setup Policies in Intersight: ansible-playbook ./create_server_policies.yml -i inventory
Setup Server Profile Template(s) in Intersight: ansible-playbook ./create_server_profile_template.yml -i inventory

Post Configuration Tasks

Execution of first two playbooks in these repositories set up Server Profile Template in Intersight. After successfully executing the playbooks, one or more server profiles can easily derived and attached to the compute node from Intersight dashboard. KVM mounted DVD option or Intersight OS Install feature is available to install Cohesity OS to these newly derived servers.