NetBox PtoV Plugin

Netbox plugin for pulling runstate (config and topology) from Arista switches and replicating them in a GNS3 virtual lab using Arista cEOS containers

• Free software: Apache-2.0
• Documentation
• Repository
• Python Package

Features

• Creates a new model/table for storing the DNS names of your GNS3 servers. ("Boring, Sidney; borrring, borrrrrrring", I know.)

• Provides a screen/page that prompts you to:

  • Select a GNS3 server and as few or as many Arista switches as you want from your devices table.
  • Enter a set of Arista EOS credentials
  • Enter a project-name to use for a new project on the GNS3 server

• Programmatically instantiates a GNS3 virtual-lab, populated with Arista cEOS container/nodes, each of which is:

  • MLAG friendly (each container is configured to use the system-mac address of the "real" switch it is emulating)
  • Running a (cEOS/lab conformed) copy of the startup-config of the switch it is emulating
  • Running the same cEOS version as the switch that it is emulating (if you have a matching Docker template installed on your GNS3 server)
  • Happy to run as an EVPN/VXLAN fabric, if that's your bag.
  • Has "links" provisioned in the vlab, mirroring the inter-switch links of the "live" switches you're modeling (detected when inspecting th LLDP tables of the switches)

• Returns a URL

• ...at which you can access the virtual-lab you just created.

Contemplated Use-cases

Change modeling, obviously. Invasive troubleshooting of pesky routing issues that you wouldn't want to spend six hours setting up a vlab for, but that would be well-worth the effort if it only took two minutes to set up. (The 14-switch topology shown in the images above took just under 60 seconds instantiate.)

Under the hood

All of the heavy lifting is done by the ptovnetlab package

As of version 0.3, netbox_ptov uses Netbox background-jobs to enqueue the call to the ptovnetlab package that does that "heavy lifting" (getting run-state from the switches via eAPI; massaging the data; creating the GNS3 project and nodes via API; etc... ) After the user clicks "submit" on the "Run a VLab" page, they are immediately redirected to the detail view page of the background job that is handling their request. Logging data from the job is appended to the "data" element of the job.

Compatibility

NetBox Version	Plugin Version
4.1	<=0.2.0.3
4.2	>=0.3

Installing

For adding to a NetBox Docker setup see the general instructions for using netbox-docker with plugins.

Install using pip:

pip install netbox_ptov

or by adding to your local_requirements.txt or plugin_requirements.txt (netbox-docker):

netbox_ptov

Enable the plugin in /opt/netbox/netbox/netbox/configuration.py, or if you use netbox-docker, your /configuration/plugins.py file :

PLUGINS = [
    'netbox_ptov'
]

PLUGINS_CONFIG = {
    "netbox_ptov": {'top_level_menu': False},
}

Create/run migrations using manage.py as per Netbox documentation.