SRLinux Netbox Demo with Ansible

This lab sets up a demo environment for Nokia SRL devices using Netbox 4.2.5. The deployment process initializes a virtual network topology using containerlab and provisions it using Netbox and Ansible. During the spin-up, Netbox is deployed, and Nokia device types are imported using the provided device library. For generating and deploying intents to the fabric, the project is using the playbooks from the netbox_integration_example branch of the intent-based-ansible-lab repository.

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Run this lab in GitHub Codespaces for free.
Learn more about Containerlab for Codespaces.

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Deployment Steps

Clone the repo

git clone --recursive https://github.com/srl-labs/srl-netbox-demo

Important

Recursive is needed as the intent-based-ansible-lab is a sub-module

Prerequisites

Containerlab installed on your machine. For installation instructions, refer to the official documentation.

Create and activate virtual environment

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

### Install requirements
pip install -r requirements.txt

### Install nokia.srlinux Ansible collection
ansible-galaxy collection install nokia.srlinux

1. Deploy the Topology:

Initiate the virtual network topology using the provided YAML file (srl_netbox.clab.yaml):

clab deploy -t srl_netbox.clab.yaml

Note

This step will spin up all necessary containers, deploy Netbox, and start importing Nokia device types from the device library. The entire clab deploy process takes about 4-5 minutes. After that, the netbox_importer container will continue running for an additional minute to complete the import, becoming healthy once finished.

Tip

Watch the logs of the netbox container. docker logs -f netbox

2. Access your Netbox

After ensuring all containers are running, you can access the Netbox GUI in two ways:

• Locally: Navigate to http://hostip:8000 using the credentials admin:admin.
• Via GitHub Codespaces: If you are running this environment in GitHub Codespaces, the application URL will be provided in the Codespaces port forwarding section.

Both methods will provide you with administrative access to manage and configure the network settings and devices.

3. Initialize Netbox:

Navigate to the scripts directory to execute the initialization scripts. These scripts will set up Netbox with necessary configurations and import data.

1. Import Infrastructure and Initial Settings:

   • This api script initializes Netbox with custom fields and imports infrastructure intents from intents/netbox_intents/lab01.yaml and lags-lab01.yaml. It triggers an API call to nokia-srl-netbox-scripts/2_Infrastructure.py, which imports the fabric configuration from these YAML files.

   bash api_scripts/import_infra.sh

2. Import Services:

   • This script imports service configurations from intents/netbox_intents/l2vpns-lab01.yaml and intents/netbox_intents/l3vpns-lab01.yaml. It makes an API call to nokia-srl-netbox-scripts/3_Services.py, processing these files to import VPN services into Netbox.

   bash api_scripts/import_service.sh

4. Generate Ansible intents from Netbox:

Execute the Ansible playbook below to generate intents based on the data stored in Netbox.

ansible-playbook -i inv/ -e intent_dir=/workspaces/srl-netbox-demo/intents/ansible_intents intent-based-ansible-lab/playbooks/netbox_generate_intents.yml --diff 

5. Deploy generated intents:

After generating the intents, deploy them using the following Ansible playbook. This script applies the configuration intents to the fabric, setting up the network as specified in the intent files.

ansible-playbook -i inv -e intent_dir=/workspaces/srl-netbox-demo/intents/ansible_intents intent-based-ansible-lab/playbooks/cf_fabric.yml --diff

Post-deployment, verify the fabric-wide configuration using fcli commands from the nornir-srl repository. To facilitate these verifications, you can set up an alias for quick access:

CLAB_TOPO=srl_netbox.clab.yaml
alias fcli="docker run -t --network $(grep '^name:' $CLAB_TOPO | awk '{print $2}') --rm -v /etc/hosts:/etc/hosts:ro -v ${PWD}/${CLAB_TOPO}:/topo.yml ghcr.io/srl-labs/nornir-srl:latest -t /topo.yml"

# Example command to verify the fabric configuration
fcli ni

Troubleshooting

Important NOTE:

• The container lab initialization might take several minutes.
• Ensure firewall and proxy settings, if any, permit the communication as per the given topology.

During the deployment process, you might encounter a few hiccups. Here are some common issues and their solutions:

Monitoring Docker Logs for netbox

If you want to monitor the deployment progress or diagnose any issues, you can check the logs of the netbox container:

docker logs -f netbox