Introduction
Using a Python script to push commands to multiple Cisco IOS devices can offer several benefits, including automation, consistency, scalability, flexibility, and reusability. By automating the process of configuring multiple network devices, Python scripts can reduce the risk of human error, save time, and ensure consistency across devices. Additionally, Python scripts can be easily modified and scaled to meet the needs of any network configuration task.
Description
Automation: Manually configuring multiple network devices can be a time-consuming and error-prone process. A Python script can automate the process, reducing the risk of human error and saving time.
Consistency: When configuring multiple devices, it is important to ensure that the configuration is consistent across all devices. A Python script can push the same commands to all devices, ensuring consistency and reducing the risk of configuration errors.
Scalability: As the number of network devices increases, the time and effort required to manually configure them also increase. A Python script can easily scale to configure hundreds or even thousands of devices.
Flexibility: A Python script can be easily modified to push different sets of commands to different devices or groups of devices, allowing for greater flexibility in network configuration.
Reusability: Once a Python script has been developed and tested, it can be reused to configure other similar devices, reducing the time and effort required for future network configuration tasks.
The topology below will be used to demonstrate the script.
Script Folder
The script folder can be downloaded at the bottom of this guide. The folder contains two sub-folders. The EXEC command folder contains a python script and the CSV files to push EXEC commands. This means, all types of show commands, copy commands, ping and the write command for example. The configuration folder contains another script and CSV lists to push configuration changes to Cisco IOS devices. Each script sequence generates a log file for the user to review the CLI output.
EXEC Command Folder
List of switches
List of EXEC commands
Script
Output log (after every script sequence)
Configuration Folder
List of switches
List of configuration commands
Script
Output log (after every script sequence)
The following folder is used to push EXEC commands to multiple Cisco IOS devices.
The “Configure Terminal” folder is used to push configuration changes to multiple Cisco IOS devices.
Install Python
The following steps show how to install Python and the Netmiko SSH library.
Description
1. Visit https://python.org and download the current python version available for your operating system
2. Install python on your system
3. Open a terminal or command line interface (CMD) on your operating system
4. Use the command "pip install netmiko" to install the SSH python library
5. Restart your PC system
CMD Command Prompt
Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22621.1413]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\NBLAB01>pip install netmiko
pip install netmiko
Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22621.1413]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\NBLAB01>pip install netmiko
Collecting netmiko
Downloading netmiko-4.1.2-py3-none-any.whl (196 kB)
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Collecting paramiko>=2.7.2
Downloading paramiko-3.1.0-py3-none-any.whl (211 kB)
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Requirement already satisfied: setuptools>=38.4.0 in c:\users\nblab01\appdata\local\programs\python\python310\lib\site-packages (from netmiko) (65.5.0)
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Downloading future-0.18.3.tar.gz (840 kB)
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Preparing metadata (setup.py) ... done
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Downloading six-1.16.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (11 kB)
Collecting cryptography>=3.3
Downloading cryptography-40.0.1-cp36-abi3-win_amd64.whl (2.6 MB)
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Installing collected packages: pyserial, tenacity, six, pyyaml, pycparser, future, bcrypt, textfsm, cffi, pynacl, ntc-templates, cryptography, paramiko, scp, netmiko
DEPRECATION: future is being installed using the legacy 'setup.py install' method, because it does not have a 'pyproject.toml' and the 'wheel' package is not installed. pip 23.1 will enforce this behaviour change. A possible replacement is to enable the '--use-pep517' option. Discussion can be found at https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/8559
Running setup.py install for future ... done
Successfully installed bcrypt-4.0.1 cffi-1.15.1 cryptography-40.0.1 future-0.18.3 netmiko-4.1.2 ntc-templates-3.3.0 paramiko-3.1.0 pycparser-2.21 pynacl-1.5.0 pyserial-3.5 pyyaml-6.0 scp-0.14.5 six-1.16.0 tenacity-8.2.2 textfsm-1.1.2
C:\Users\NBLAB01>
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