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Try EDA#

We believe that EDA embodies what a network automation of the modern age should look like - declarative and programmable abstractions for both configuration and state, streaming-based engine, equipped with network-wide queries, extensible and multivendor-capable.
And we don't want you to blindly take our word for it, instead we made EDA easily accessible1 so that both network engineers and cloud practitioners could be the judge.
With no license and no registration required, you are mere couple commands away from having the full EDA experience wherever you are - with your laptop, in the cloud or logged in the VM.

To deliver the "Try EDA" experience, we have created an EDA playground - a repository that contains everything you need to install and provision a demo EDA instance with the virtual network on the side. Let us guide you through the installation process.

Quickstart video walkthrough

If you prefer a video walkthrough that starts from the very beginning, we have you covered! Check out the Event-Driven Automation playlist where Andy Lapteff walks you through the entire process step-by-step starting with installing a hypervisor all the way to the running EDA instance.

  1. Choose where to run EDA

    Since EDA uses Kubernetes as its application platform, you can deploy the EDA Playground anywhere a k8s cluster runs.
    The most popular way to install the demo EDA instance is on a Linux server/VM, but you can also run it on macOS, in an existing Kubernetes cluster, or on Windows using WSL.

    If you get stuck with the installation, please reach out to us on Discord, we are happy to help!

  2. Ensure minimal system requirements are met

    Regardless of whether you run EDA Playground locally on a laptop, or in a VM locally or in the cloud, the underlying k8s cluster should have the following resources available to it2:

    10 vCPUs
    16GB of RAM
    30GB of SSD storage

    For a VM-based installation, this means that the VM should be provisioned with (at the minium) this amount of resources.

  3. Clone the EDA Playground repository

    Proceed with cloning the EDA playground repository that contains everything you need to install and provision a demo EDA instance.

    If you are using a Linux VM or a server to deploy the Playground, you should clone the repository on that VM/server.

    You will need git3 to clone it:

    git clone https://github.com/nokia-eda/playground && \
cd playground

  4. Prepare the VM/Server

    If you are deploying the EDA Playground on a VM/Server, you should take care of the following:

    Install make that orchestrates the installation of the EDA Playground.

    sudo apt install -y make

    sudo yum install -y make

    Install docker using our automated installer, if you don't have it already installed:

    make install-docker

    Or install it manually, by following the official Docker installation guide for your OS. If you installed docker via the package manager of your distribution, remove it and install as per the Docker installation guide.

    Ensure sudo-less docker access

    After completing the docker installation, check if you can run docker commands without sudo by running:

    docker ps

    If you get a permission denied error, then you need to add your user to the docker group:

    1. Create the docker group.

      sudo groupadd docker

    2. Add your user to the docker group.

      sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

    3. Log out and log back in so that your group membership is re-evaluated.

    Ensure the relevant sysctl values are properly sized by pasting and running the following:

    make configure-sysctl-params

  5. Install the EDA Playground

    A single command separates you from the EDA Playground installation. But before you run it, if you want to enable the Natural Language support for the EDA Query functionality, provide the LLM key (OpenAI) with an environment variable4:

    export LLM_API_KEY=<your-OpenAI-API-key>

    Now, run the EDA installer:

    make try-eda

    The installation will take approximately 10 minutes to complete. Once it is done, you can optionally verify the installation.

    EDA License

    As you may have noticed, the EDA Playground installation does not require a license. We wanted to ensure that automation with EDA is accessible to everyone, anytime.
    The EDA system can perfectly run without a license with the following caveats:

    • Only the nodes inside the EDA's Digital Twin can be used. These include the SR Linux nodes that will be deployed for you by the time make try-eda step finishes as well as any 3rd party vendors supported by EDA's Digital Twin. No hardware nodes can be used in an unlicensed EDA mode5.
    • No integration with the cloud systems such as OpenShift, VMware, etc.

  6. Access the UI

    EDA is an API-first framework, with its UI being a client of the very same API. After the make try-eda finishes, you will be able to access the EDA UI using the address printed in the terminal:

    --> The UI can be accessed using https://10.10.1.1:9443 #(1)!
--> INFO: EDA is launched
    1. Instead of 10.10.1.1 IP you may see the IP address of the VM/Server where you installed EDA Playground or its hostname. You can use any address that resolves to the VM/Server hosting the Try EDA installation, not only the one printed in the terminal.

    Open your web browser and navigate to provided URL to access the EDA UI. As you would expect, credentials are required in order to log in. The default credentials are as follow:

    • Username: admin
    • Password: admin

Now that you completed the installation, you can either read more on the installation details, or continue with creating your first unit of automation with EDA.

Production installation

For a production installation instructions, please refer to the Software Installation document.

  1. As no other framework of comparable scale. ↩

  2. This as well accounts for the playground network topology. ↩

  3. Many distributions come with git preinstalled, but if not you should install it via your package manager.
    For instance with apt-enabled systems:

    sudo apt install -y git
     ↩

  4. You can provide the LLM key after the installation as well. ↩

  5. Containerlab-deployed SR Linux nodes are planned to be supported in the unlicensed mode in the future. ↩