Connecting to multiple devices
So far, we have always only dealt with a single device and our connection info was always specified directly in the Python script. It is quite a common use case though to issue the same set of commands or the same configuration to an entire fleet of devices.
Using a script to apply the same command automatically instead of logging into each device manually not only saves time but also prevents configuration drift since all devices are guaranteed to be issued the exact same commands.
In this recipe, we are going to specify the connection information for our devices in the form of a JSON file. Based on the connection information stored in this JSON file we'll then connect to each of these devices, issue a command (show running-config
in this example), retrieve the output, and save it to a file.
Getting ready
Open your code editor and start by creating a file called connect_multiple.py
. Next, navigate your terminal to the same directory...