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Installation

Pre-requisites

The following requirements must be satisfied to use the labs:

  • The user should have sudo privileges
  • A Linux host/server/VM
  • Python 3.8 or later
  • Install ansible-core from 2.12.6 to 2.15.x excluding 2.13.0
  • Install arista.avd collection from Ansible Galaxy
  • AVD additional Python requirements
  • Docker
  • containerlab
  • Git
  • Arista cEOS-Lab image (4.23.x or above)
  • Alpine-host image
  • Clone the repository using git clone.
git clone https://github.com/arista-netdevops-community/avd-cEOS-Lab.git

git clone git@github.com:arista-netdevops-community/avd-cEOS-Lab.git
Info
  • For Python3, docker and ansible-core installation please refer to the installation guides based on the host OS.
  • For arista.avd installation please refer to the official documenation.
  • For containerlab installation please refer to the official documentation.
Note
  • Containerlab topology definitions have changed starting v0.15 - Release Notes. Latest release of this repository is containerlab v0.15 (and above) compatible. For older containerlab compatible syntax download v1.1.2
  • arista.avd v3.0.0 contains breaking changes to data models Release Notes. Latest release of this repository is arista.avd v3.0.0 and above compatible. For older avd compatible syntax download older release.
  • Starting Python 3.10 the default SSL/TLS ciphers have been updated. Latest release of this repository updates the cipher suite on EOS via a security profile applied to eAPI to be compatible with Python 3.10.

Installing Arista cEOS-Lab image

  • Download the image from www.arista.com > Software Downloads > cEOS-Lab > EOS-4.2x.y > cEOS-lab-4.2x.y.tar.xz
  • Copy the cEOS-lab-4.2x.y.tar.xz to the host/server/VM.
  • Ensure Docker is already set up and running.
docker version
  • Next, use the tar file to import the cEOS-Lab image using the following command
docker import cEOS-lab.tar.xz ceosimage:TAG
Example
docker import cEOS64-lab-4.26.1F.tar.xz ceosimage:4.26.1F
  • Now you should be able to see the Arista cEOS-Lab image.
docker images | egrep "REPO|ceos"
Reveal Output 
REPOSITORY            TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
ceosimage             4.26.1F             41b309a15f5c        30 hours ago        1.71GB

Installing the alpine-host image

Info

You have the option to use Arista cEOS-Lab or any other Linux-based container as a client/host.

In which case please update the topology.yaml in respective lab folders, as by default lab uses an alpine-host image for client/host containers

  • Build the alpine-host image using the modified Dockerfile from docker-topo
  • Navigate to alpine_host directory in this repository
├── alpine_host
   ├── Dockerfile
   ├── README.md
   ├── build.sh
   └── entrypoint.sh
  • Run the build.sh script
./build.sh
  • Verify the alpine-host image is created
docker images | egrep "TAG|alpine"
Reveal Output 
REPOSITORY            TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
alpine-host           latest              eab21450c58c        30 hours ago        68.7MB

cEOS-Lab containerlab template

Note

The below steps are no longer required for containerlab v0.15 and above.

The v2.0.0 and above releases of this repository include this template in the topology.yaml itself.

The Below steps are only required if using containerlab version less than v0.15

Replace the containerlab cEOS default template with the ceos.cfg.tpl file from this repository.

ceos_lab_template
└── ceos.cfg.tpl
Warning

If the default template is not replaced with the one from this repository, then for the initial AVD config replace you will observe a timeout error.

The default template can be usually found at /etc/containerlab/templates/arista/ceos.cfg.tpl

This is to ensure the containers by default come up with:

  • Multi agent routing model
  • MGMT vrf for management connectivity
  • eAPI enabled