Network Automation: Preparing Jenkins for NetCICD

NetCICD is a network automation framework developed from the start as a structured pipeline. It takes an industrial approach for network deployments, given the bulk nature of network changes.

In a series of blogs I take you through the steps required to get a NetCICD pipeline up and running using the NetCICD github repo and local instances of Gitlab, Jenkins, Ansible/AWX and VIRL on VMware Workstation.

In the second episode we prepared VIRL/CML, in the third we set up git.

This is the fourth in the series of blogs dedicated to get the NetCICD network automation pipeline up and running. In this episode we will prepare Jenkins. This is the last preparatory step.

Plugins

Jenkins is a basic system that can be enhanced with plugins. A number of plugins is required to get NetCICD to run. The following list contains the most important plugins (as installed in my system, some are installed as dependency):

Ansible plugin
Ansible Tower Plugin
Apache HttpComponents Client 4.x API Plugin
Authentication Tokens API Plugin
Branch API Plugin
Build Pipeline Plugin
Build Timeout
Command Agent Launcher Plugin
Conditional BuildStep
Credentials Binding Plugin
Credentials Plugin
Design Language
Display URL API
Durable Task Plugin
Email Extension Plugin
Favorite
Folders Plugin
Git client plugin
Git plugin
GIT server Plugin
Gitlab Hook Plugin
GitLab Logo Plugin
GitLab Plugin
jQuery plugin
JUnit Plugin
OWASP Markup Formatter Plugin
PAM Authentication plugin
Parameterized Trigger plugin
Pipeline
Pipeline Graph Analysis Plugin
Pipeline Utility Steps
Utility steps for pipeline jobs.
Pipeline: API
Plugin that defines Pipeline API.
Pipeline: Basic Steps
Pipeline: Build Step
Pipeline: Declarative
Pipeline: Declarative Agent API
Pipeline: Declarative Extension Points API
Pipeline: GitHub Groovy Libraries
Pipeline: Groovy
Pipeline: Input Step
Pipeline: Job
Pipeline: Milestone Step
Pipeline: Model API
Pipeline: Multibranch
Pipeline: Nodes and Processes
Pipeline: REST API Plugin
Pipeline: SCM Step
Pipeline: Shared Groovy Libraries
Pipeline: Stage Step
Pipeline: Stage Tags Metadata
Pipeline: Stage View Plugin
Pipeline: Step API
Pipeline: Supporting APIs
Plain Credentials Plugin
Resource Disposer Plugin
Run Condition Plugin
SCM API Plugin
Script Security Plugin
Server Sent Events (SSE) Gateway Plugin
SSH Credentials Plugin
SSH Slaves plugin
Structs Plugin
Timestamper
Token Macro Plugin
Workspace Cleanup Plugin

You can install credentials under Manage Jenkins -> Manage Plugins.

Credentials

In order for the branches to run successfully, you’ll need credentials. In order to prevent credentials inclusion in the Jenkinsfile, all credentials are stored in the Jenkins credential store. They are encrypted with the jenkins instance ID, which makes stealing the credential store useless.

The following credentials are required: Jenkins-CRED, CML-URL and CML-SIM-CRED.

Jenkins-CRED

First of all you need to be able to link an agent in Jenkins remotely. You need credentials for this. These are normal username/password credentials:

For this to work, the security settings in Jenkins need to be set to: “Logged in users can do anything”.

CML-URL

The next credential you need is the CML-URL, in my case: “http://192.168.32.148:19399”. This needs to be entered as a secret text credential:

CML-SIM-CRED Sluiten

These are the credentials of the user as which the simulations are run. They are regular credentials (username/password). If you use VIRL, use guest/guest, for CML use the specific credentials you set up for the NetCICD simulation.