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Virtual network#

To make sure that you can get the full EDA experience without upfronting any hardware investment, EDA is packaged with a Digital Sandbox solution called CX.
CX is in charge of creating and managing virtual topologies running in the cluster.

Note

If you completed the Try EDA procedure the virtual network is already created for you. This section provides details on how the virtual network is created, what it consists of, and how connect to the virtual nodes.

Example topology#

An example 3-node Leaf/Spine topology is provided with this quickstart and is automatically deployed when you run the all-in-one try-eda installation command.

As part of this command a separate make target is called to load the topology resources into the cluster which, in its turn, triggers CX controller to start spinning up the nodes and wiring links between them.

make topology-load #(1)!

  1. No need to run this target if you already completed the Try EDA step, it has happened already.

    topology-load targets loads the example topology provided in the json file as a ConfigMap into the cluster. The CX controller watches for ConfigMap changes and creates the corresponding topology resources.

As a result you will get you the following topology running in your cluster:

As you would expect, it takes some time to spin up the nodes and establish the connections, you can check the status of the deployed topology in the Verify section of the quickstart.

Connecting to the nodes#

Your network engineering roots may ask to check out what is going on on an individual node, which requires you to start a shell in the Pod running the SR Linux simulator. This can be accomplished with these simple commands:

make leaf1-ssh #(1)!
  1. Of course, changing leaf1 to leaf2 or spine1 will log you in the other nodes.
Using configuration file(s): ['/etc/opt/srlinux/srlinux.rc']
Welcome to the srlinux CLI.
Type 'help' (and press <ENTER>) if you need any help using this.
--{ + running }--[  ]--
A:leaf1#

Initial configuration#

The SR Linux nodes (the leaf and spine switches) that make up the virtual network come up with a minimal node configuration - only the bits that are required by EDA to onboard the nodes. By connecting to the node and running info command you can see the initial configuration and verify that it has no configuration besides the basic management settings.

With this barebones topology deployed we can start exploring EDA automation powers. Let's explore how EDA framework can be used to provision complex services with simple declarative abstractions.

Automating fabric configuration

Tearing down the topology#

In case you break your topology nodes beyond repair, you can always start over by tearing down the topology:

make teardown-topology

This will remove the topology nodes resources, the accompanying simulators and NPP pods associated with them.