Increasing a Working Netlab Topology « ipSpace.internet weblog

One of many joyful netlab customers despatched me an attention-grabbing problem:

• He’s constructed a big lab and added tons of additional configuration to the lab gadgets.
• Afterwards, he realized he’d like so as to add a couple of extra gadgets to the lab and was nervous about dropping all of the modifications he had made.

Sadly, you can not add new gadgets to an already-running lab. You need to shut down the lab, change the topology description, and begin a brand new lab. Nevertheless, there are issues you are able to do to protect the additional work you already did:

• Save the present system configurations with netlab accumulate -o folder. Be sure to specify an output folder; by default, netlab saves the configurations within the config folder, which the netlab down –cleanup command removes..
• Examine whether or not you possibly can load the saved configurations with netlab config your_folder –check (the –check choice is handed to Ansible)
• Shut down the lab, change the topology file, and restart the lab.
• Add the saved configurations to the lab gadgets with netlab config your_folder. The command will fail for all gadgets you added to the lab, however ought to merge the saved configurations with these generated from the modified lab topology.

The above process undoubtedly works on most Cisco platforms (IOS/XE, NX-OS, IOS-XR) and Arista EOS, Aruba AOS, and Dell OS10; it likely works on Juniper platforms. Right here’s what the precise limitations are:

• It’s a must to get the entire system configuration with netlab accumulate
• netlab accumulate should save the system configuration in a single textual content file
• netlab config should have the ability to take that textual content file and push it as a brand new configuration to the system.

I by no means examined VyOS or Mikrotik, however I do know you’ll expertise issues in these situations:

• You can not save the Linux or Fortinet configurations (particulars).
• You can not save the data-plane configuration for FRR.
• You possibly can reload solely the FRRouting configuration onto FRR, Cumulus Linux 4.x, and SoNIC gadgets.
• Because of the manner netlab configures Nokia SR Linux and Nokia SR-OS, you can not use the saved system configuration with the netlab config command.

Lastly, you possibly can use netlab config –reload to reload the saved configurations to Nokia gadgets, however you then’d lose all of the modifications netlab made to configure the hyperlinks and routing protocol parameters between the already-existing and the brand new gadgets. You can, nonetheless, run one other netlab preliminary command (hopefully restricted to Nokia gadgets; see under) after reloading the saved configurations.

$ netlab config saved --limit eos,iosv,iol
$ netlab config --reload saved --limit srlinux
$ netlab preliminary --limit srlinux

Thankfully, the networking engineer who needed to increase his lab used Arista EOS gadgets, and the migration labored flawlessly.

One of many joyful netlab customers despatched me an attention-grabbing problem:

• He’s constructed a big lab and added tons of additional configuration to the lab gadgets.
• Afterwards, he realized he’d like so as to add a couple of extra gadgets to the lab and was nervous about dropping all of the modifications he had made.

Sadly, you can not add new gadgets to an already-running lab. You need to shut down the lab, change the topology description, and begin a brand new lab. Nevertheless, there are issues you are able to do to protect the additional work you already did:

• Save the present system configurations with netlab accumulate -o folder. Be sure to specify an output folder; by default, netlab saves the configurations within the config folder, which the netlab down –cleanup command removes..
• Examine whether or not you possibly can load the saved configurations with netlab config your_folder –check (the –check choice is handed to Ansible)
• Shut down the lab, change the topology file, and restart the lab.
• Add the saved configurations to the lab gadgets with netlab config your_folder. The command will fail for all gadgets you added to the lab, however ought to merge the saved configurations with these generated from the modified lab topology.

The above process undoubtedly works on most Cisco platforms (IOS/XE, NX-OS, IOS-XR) and Arista EOS, Aruba AOS, and Dell OS10; it likely works on Juniper platforms. Right here’s what the precise limitations are:

• It’s a must to get the entire system configuration with netlab accumulate
• netlab accumulate should save the system configuration in a single textual content file
• netlab config should have the ability to take that textual content file and push it as a brand new configuration to the system.

I by no means examined VyOS or Mikrotik, however I do know you’ll expertise issues in these situations:

• You can not save the Linux or Fortinet configurations (particulars).
• You can not save the data-plane configuration for FRR.
• You possibly can reload solely the FRRouting configuration onto FRR, Cumulus Linux 4.x, and SoNIC gadgets.
• Because of the manner netlab configures Nokia SR Linux and Nokia SR-OS, you can not use the saved system configuration with the netlab config command.

Lastly, you possibly can use netlab config –reload to reload the saved configurations to Nokia gadgets, however you then’d lose all of the modifications netlab made to configure the hyperlinks and routing protocol parameters between the already-existing and the brand new gadgets. You can, nonetheless, run one other netlab preliminary command (hopefully restricted to Nokia gadgets; see under) after reloading the saved configurations.

$ netlab config saved --limit eos,iosv,iol
$ netlab config --reload saved --limit srlinux
$ netlab preliminary --limit srlinux

Thankfully, the networking engineer who needed to increase his lab used Arista EOS gadgets, and the migration labored flawlessly.