MPLS in the SDN Era --> DevNet SPAUTO

All of the study notes have now been moved to use auto-generated documentation to build a static site with Github Pages. Alongside all the code documentation, you will find a folder structure for notes in markdown broken down by test categories.

Documentation + Study Notes

A lab topology based on MPLS in the SDN era book used for 300-535 SPAUTO studies

Cisco Certified DevNet Specialist - Service Provider Automation and Programmability

Why MPLS in the SDN Era?

Simple. This is an incredible book for any and all Network Engineers interested in learning technologies used in Service Provider environments. The book is heavily focused on MPLS, SDN, Segment-Routing, BGP, L2VPN/L3VPNs, over-all traffic engineering and much more. These are common terms within SP networks and the book does an incredible job in guiding the readers while exploring the device configurations in this topology. However, many other topics are not covered by the book and this REPO will hopefully fill in the gaps. This book lays the foundation for our lab topology, but it has increased and grown over time. Other material that has been helpful in studying is the Network Programmability with YANG book, which does cover a lot of the topics in the blueprint!

This book goes through a number of device configurations in a multi-vendor lab topology (Cisco IOSXR && Juniper). However, For this lab, all devices have been replaced with Cisco-IOSXR/XE as we are working on a Cisco Certification.

To fully automate Service Provider Networks, you must understand Service Provider Networks

MPLS in the SDN Era

Network Programmability with YANG

What does this repository include & cover

My goal is to gather all of my self-training in this repository and cover all the major Cisco Certified DevNet Specialist (300-535 SPAUTO) topics.

Extras

There will be some extra material in this repository that can be an aid for other areas including but not limited to:

- Batfish
- Nornir

How can I use this repo to study?

I recommend you read the Documentation for my study notes and if you want to play around creating scripts with Nornir, Ansible using SSH/NETCONF, etc. Go ahead and start the topology using ContainerLab and have fun automating the network!

Checkout the Wiki!

30% of the SPAUTO exam is around Automation and Orchestration platforms, such as NSO. I can't stress enough the importance of taking the time to setup an NSO instance to explore and take advantage of the many examples in this repository. Containerizing NSO for CI/CD is also part of the blueprint, which we will cover.

Why rely on this complicated lab topology?

I learn better when I am doing, not just reading and specially when breaking things. Having this complicated topology, building all the services in an automated way will be key to our success in passing the certification. There will be tons of material in the end that will cover all the topics in the exam.

Study Material & Resources

- MPLS in the SDN Era
- Network Programmability with YANG
- Nicholas Russo DEVNET Material (Pluralsight)

Container Lab

After exploring ContainerLab, I have begun to move away from EVE-NG and completely dockerize this entire topology. The default branch on this project is now containerlab. Initially, I thought I would share an exported lab from EVE-NG, but including the CLAB topology in this lab makes it so much more portable.

I've created a simple to use docker-compose service to start the lab. ContainerLab it's self is pulled down as a docker container, so you don't need a local installation of ContainerLab unless you want to have one. I recommend you deploy this lab in a Linux environment, as docker virtualization will prevent you from starting in a Mac or Windows env.

Requirements

• Docker
• Docker-Compose
• Roughly 32Gb of available RAM, give or take a few depending on usage.

Starting Lab

Simply run the service using docker-compose

docker-compose run clab

You should see something similar to this

➜  spauto_devnet git:(containerlab) ✗ docker-compose run clab
Creating spauto_devnet_clab_run ... done
INFO[0000] Parsing & checking topology file: spauto-mpls-sdn.yml 
INFO[0000] Creating lab directory: /src/clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml 
INFO[0000] Creating docker network: Name='spauto', IPv4Subnet='172.100.100.0/24', IPv6Subnet='2001:172:100:100::/80', MTU='1500' 
INFO[0000] Creating container: xrv-pe1                  
INFO[0000] Creating container: xrv-rr-1                 
INFO[0000] Creating container: xrv-p2                   
INFO[0000] Creating container: xrv-p1                   
INFO[0000] Creating container: xrv-rr-2                 
INFO[0000] Creating container: xrv-pe2                  
INFO[0000] Creating container: xrv-pe3                  
INFO[0000] Creating container: xrv-pe4                  
INFO[0001] Creating virtual wire: xrv-pe1:eth4 <--> xrv-pe2:eth3 
INFO[0002] Creating virtual wire: xrv-pe2:eth4 <--> xrv-p2:eth1 
INFO[0002] Creating virtual wire: xrv-pe4:eth1 <--> xrv-p2:eth6 
INFO[0002] Creating virtual wire: xrv-pe1:eth5 <--> xrv-p1:eth2 
INFO[0002] Creating virtual wire: xrv-p1:eth5 <--> xrv-p2:eth4 
INFO[0002] Creating virtual wire: xrv-p1:eth4 <--> xrv-p2:eth3 
INFO[0002] Creating virtual wire: xrv-rr-2:eth1 <--> xrv-p1:eth6 
INFO[0002] Creating virtual wire: xrv-rr-2:eth3 <--> xrv-p2:eth5 
INFO[0003] Creating virtual wire: xrv-pe3:eth3 <--> xrv-pe4:eth2 
INFO[0003] Creating virtual wire: xrv-pe3:eth2 <--> xrv-p1:eth7 
INFO[0003] Creating virtual wire: xrv-rr-1:eth4 <--> xrv-p2:eth2 
INFO[0003] Creating virtual wire: xrv-rr-1:eth2 <--> xrv-p1:eth3 
INFO[0003] Creating virtual wire: xrv-rr-1:eth3 <--> xrv-rr-2:eth2 
INFO[0004] Adding containerlab host entries to /etc/hosts file 
Run 'containerlab version upgrade' to upgrade or go check other installation options at https://containerlab.srlinux.dev/install/ 
+---+-----------------------------------+--------------+---------------------------+--------+---------+--------------------+--------------------------+
| # |               Name                | Container ID |           Image           |  Kind  |  State  |    IPv4 Address    |       IPv6 Address       |
+---+-----------------------------------+--------------+---------------------------+--------+---------+--------------------+--------------------------+
| 1 | clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-p1   | eef17ad66ff1 | h4ndzdatm0ld/vr-xrv:6.1.3 | vr-xrv | running | 172.100.100.101/24 | 2001:172:100:100::101/80 |
| 2 | clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-p2   | 24e5fc6af015 | h4ndzdatm0ld/vr-xrv:6.1.3 | vr-xrv | running | 172.100.100.102/24 | 2001:172:100:100::102/80 |
| 3 | clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-pe1  | efb11d90a5eb | h4ndzdatm0ld/vr-xrv:6.1.3 | vr-xrv | running | 172.100.100.11/24  | 2001:172:100:100::11/80  |
| 4 | clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-pe2  | 7d604f4f06f8 | h4ndzdatm0ld/vr-xrv:6.1.3 | vr-xrv | running | 172.100.100.22/24  | 2001:172:100:100::22/80  |
| 5 | clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-pe3  | 285733f28608 | h4ndzdatm0ld/vr-xrv:6.1.3 | vr-xrv | running | 172.100.100.33/24  | 2001:172:100:100::33/80  |
| 6 | clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-pe4  | 5af4945fab68 | h4ndzdatm0ld/vr-xrv:6.1.3 | vr-xrv | running | 172.100.100.44/24  | 2001:172:100:100::44/80  |
| 7 | clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-rr-1 | b5084e97738d | h4ndzdatm0ld/vr-xrv:6.1.3 | vr-xrv | running | 172.100.100.201/24 | 2001:172:100:100::201/80 |
| 8 | clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-rr-2 | 6a80d3285c2e | h4ndzdatm0ld/vr-xrv:6.1.3 | vr-xrv | running | 172.100.100.202/24 | 2001:172:100:100::202/80 |
+---+-----------------------------------+--------------+---------------------------+--------+---------+--------------------+--------------------------+

This will start a lab topology for you and all the devices should be accessible via SSH/NETCONF/gNMI. The topology YAML file has been crafted with a custom Docker Management Network to statically assign the IP's to each node as well. This network is reserved under 172.100.100.0/24. From your local machine, after starting the devices, you should be able to ssh into each one.

You will know the lab has been successfully started once all devices show healthy state. Validate via docker command

docker ps

The status should say (healthy)

Load Configurations

Unfortunately, these vrnetlab based nodes don't support providing a startup-config via ContainerLab. However, I've provided a Nornir job to simply deploy all the configs to each one of the devices.

After starting the lab and waiting around 7 Minutes, launch off the Nornir script to deploy the configurations.

Install the project venv

poetry install

Activate venv

poetry shell

Locate the Nornir playground

cd mpls_in_the_sdn_era/mpls_sdn_era_nornir

Automate

python nr_deploy_configs.py

Destroying the lab

To destroy the lab, simply override the docker-compose service command and destroy it.

docker-compose run clab containerlab destroy -t spauto-mpls-sdn.yml

Example stats of running all 8 core XR Routers simultaneously.

CONTAINER ID   NAME                                CPU %     MEM USAGE / LIMIT     MEM %     NET I/O          BLOCK I/O     PIDS
9d6acb79bcbe   clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-pe4    2.56%     1.769GiB / 62.71GiB   2.82%     259kB / 207kB    0B / 82.8MB   13
de723690af86   clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-p1     2.42%     1.719GiB / 62.71GiB   2.74%     204kB / 212kB    0B / 60.2MB   13
f0e0710d1edb   clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-pe1    2.41%     1.793GiB / 62.71GiB   2.86%     213kB / 168kB    0B / 59.2MB   13
aca6fb91120c   clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-pe3    1.89%     1.758GiB / 62.71GiB   2.80%     121kB / 56.9kB   0B / 52MB     13
63277aac88ef   clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-p2     1.47%     1.718GiB / 62.71GiB   2.74%     198kB / 204kB    0B / 59.1MB   13
c83b2faa5ea8   clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-pe2    2.02%     1.796GiB / 62.71GiB   2.86%     206kB / 146kB    0B / 57.7MB   13
35fcceedc92a   clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-rr-2   4.33%     1.744GiB / 62.71GiB   2.78%     185kB / 186kB    0B / 60.5MB   13
3f62259d2ae9   clab-spauto-mpls-sdn.yml-xrv-rr-1   1.45%     1.745GiB / 62.71GiB   2.78%     190kB / 190kB    0B / 59.5MB   13

NSO

A pre-packaged NSO Docker container is available. This will be a fresh docker container with the following NEDs:

cisco-ios-cli-6.69
cisco-iosxr-cli-7.33

To spin up the NSO instance

docker-compose up -d nso

To access via UI (admin/admin) get the IP address of the NSO instance and open it in your browser

docker inspect --format='{{range .NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.IPAddress}}{{end}}'

If you want to simply ssh from the same machine that's hosting the container

ssh admin@localhost -p 2024

The docker-compose service is mapping port 2024 to 22. More to come!