Aruba ArubaOS-CX#

ArubaOS-CX virtualized switch is identified with vr-aoscx or vr-aruba_aoscx kind in the topology file. It is built using vrnetlab project and essentially is a Qemu VM packaged in a docker container format.

Managing vr-aoscx nodes#

Aruba AOS-CX node launched with containerlab can be managed via the following interfaces:

docker exec -it <container-name/id> bash

ssh admin@<container-name/id>

Interfaces mapping#

• eth0 - management interface connected to the containerlab management network
• eth1+ - second and subsequent data interface

When containerlab launches vr-aoscx node, it will assign IPv4 address to the eth0 interface. These addresses can be used to reach management plane of the router.

Data interfaces eth1+ needs to be configured with IP addressing manually using CLI/management protocols.

Features and options#

Node configuration#

vr-aoscx nodes come up with a basic configuration where only the control plane and line cards are provisioned, as well as the admin user with the provided password.

Startup configuration#

It is possible to make ArubaOS-CX nodes boot up with a user-defined startup-config instead of a built-in one. With a startup-config property of the node/kind user sets the path to the config file that will be mounted to a container and used as a startup-config:

topology:
  nodes:
    node:
      kind: vr-aoscx
      startup-config: myconfig.txt

With this knob containerlab is instructed to take a file myconfig.txt from the directory that hosts the topology file, and copy it to the lab directory for that specific node under the /config/startup-config.cfg name. Then the directory that hosts the startup-config dir is mounted to the container. This will result in this config being applied at startup by the node.

Configuration is applied after the node is started, thus it can contain partial configuration snippets that you desire to add on top of the default config that a node boots up with.