Automate Mikrotik RouterOS Config Backups with Ansible

Learn how to automate configuration backups for Mikrotik RouterOS with Ansible. This guide includes a step-by-step Playbook example for seamless backups using SSH and file management.

How to Backup Config on Mikrotik RouterOS with Ansible?

Maintaining a backup copy of your network appliance configuration is a good practice for all IT Professionals. You could automate this process for Mikrotik RouterOS appliances using Ansible.

I'm going to show you a live Playbook with some simple Ansible code.

I'm Luca Berton and welcome to today's episode of Ansible Pilot.

Ansible Backup Config on Mikrotik RouterOS

> community.routeros: Modules for MikroTik RouterOS

Let's talk about the Ansible collection community.routeros.

The full name is community.routeros, which means that is an Ansible Network Collection designed to interact with Mikrotik RouterOS devices.

It contains modules for MikroTik RouterOS.

Links

[Community.Routeros](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/community/routeros/index.html)

## Playbook

How to Backup Config on Mikrotik RouterOS with Ansible Playbook.

I'm going to show how to back up the current configuration of a Mikrotik RouterOS connecting via SSH protocol using the username and password credentials and save it to a file with the device name and timestamp.

code

inventory

``ini


[mikrotik]
192.168.88.2

[mikrotik:vars]
ansible_user=luca
ansible_password=mysecretpassword123
ansible_connection=ansible.netcommon.network_cli
ansible_network_os=community.routeros.routeros
ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3
ansible_command_timeout=120



backup_mikrotik.yml

`yaml


---
name: Backup Mikrotik
  hosts: mikrotik
  gather_facts: false
  vars:
    backup_dir: "/home/luca/network/backup"
  tasks:
    - name: Export
      ansible.builtin.shell: >-
        sshpass -p '{{ ansible_password }}' ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no {{ ansible_user }}@{{ inventory_hostname }} /export
      register: export
      delegate_to: localhost

   - name: Backup
      ansible.builtin.copy:
        content: "{{ export.stdout }}"
        dest: "{{ backup_dir }}/{{ inventory_hostname }}_config.{{ lookup('pipe', 'date +%Y-%m-%d@%H:%M:%S') }}"
      when: export is defined
      delegate_to: localhost



requirements.yml

`yaml


---
collections:
  - name: community.routeros



requirements setup

``bash

$ ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml

Starting galaxy collection install process

Process install dependency map

Starting collection install process

Downloading https://galaxy.ansible.com/download/community-routeros-2.0.0.tar.gz to /home/luca/.ansible/tmp/ansible-local-47086a9aez7_s/tmpqz_6puy_/community-routeros-2.0.0-hlve2za9

Installing 'community.routeros:2.0.0' to '/home/luca/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/community/routeros'

community.routeros:2.0.0 was installed successfully

'ansible.netcommon:3.0.0' is already installed, skipping.

'ansible.utils:2.6.1' is already installed, skipping.

luca@luca01:~/network$ ansible-galaxy collection list

/home/luca/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections

Collection Version

------------------ -------

ansible.netc