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Cisco Catalyst 9000v#

The Cisco Catalyst 9000v (or Cat9kv for short) is a virtualised form of the Cisco Catalyst 9000 series switches. It is identified with cisco_cat9kv kind in the topology file and built using vrnetlab project and essentially is a Qemu VM packaged in a docker container format.

The Cisco Catalyst 9000v performs simulation of the dataplane ASICs that are present in the physical hardware. The two simulated ASICs are:

  • Cisco UADP (Unified Access Data-Plane). This is the default ASIC that's simulated.
  • Silicon One Q200 (referred to as Q200).

Note

The Q200 simulation has a limited featureset compared to the UADP simulation.

Resource requirements#

The Cisco Catalyst 9000v is a resource-hungry VM. When launched with the default settings, it requires the following resources:

UADP Q200
vCPU 4 4
RAM (MB) 18432 12288
Disk (GB) 4 4

Users can adjust the CPU and memory resources by setting adding appropriate environment variables as explained in Tuning Qemu Parameters section.

Managing Cisco Catalyst 9000v nodes#

You can manage the Cisco Catalyst 9000v with containerlab via the following interfaces:

to connect to a bash shell of a running Cisco Catalyst 9000v container:

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

to connect to the Cisco Catalyst 9000v CLI

ssh admin@<container-name/id>

NETCONF server is running over port 830

ssh admin@<container-name> -p 830 -s netconf

Note

Default credentials: admin:admin

Interface naming#

You can use interfaces names in the topology file like they appear in the Cisco Catalyst 9000v CLI.

The interface naming convention is: GigabitEthernet1/0/X (or Gi1/0/X), where X is the port number.

With that naming convention in mind:

  • Gi1/0/1 - first data port available
  • Gi1/0/2 - second data port, and so on...

The example ports above would be mapped to the following Linux interfaces inside the container running the Cisco Catalyst 9000v VM:

  • eth0 - management interface connected to the containerlab management network. Mapped to GigabitEthernet0/0.
  • eth1 - First data-plane interface. Mapped to GigabitEthernet1/0/1 interface.
  • eth2 - Second data-plane interface. Mapped to GigabitEthernet1/0/2 interface and so on.

Note

Data interfaces may take 5+ minutes to function correctly after the node boots.

You must define interfaces in a contigous manner in your toplogy file. For example, if you want to use Gi1/0/4 you must define Gi1/0/1, Gi1/0/2 and Gi1/0/3. See the example below.

name: my-cat9kv-lab
topology:
  nodes:
    cat9kv1:
      kind: cisco_cat9kv
      image: vrnetlab/vr-cat9kv:17.12.01p
    cat9kv2:
      kind: cisco_cat9kv
      image: vrnetlab/vr-cat9kv:17.12.01p

  links:
    - endpoints: ["cat9kv1:Gi1/0/1","cat9kv2:GigabitEthernet1/0/1"] 
    - endpoints: ["cat9kv1:Gi1/0/2","cat9kv2:GigabitEthernet1/0/2"]
    - endpoints: ["cat9kv1:Gi1/0/3", "cat9kv2:GigabitEthernet1/0/3"]
    - endpoints: ["cat9kv1:Gi1/0/4", "cat9kv2:GigabitEthernet1/0/4"]

Warning

Regardless of how many links are defined in your containerlab topology, the Catalyst 9000v will always display 8 data-plane interfaces. Links/interfaces that you did not define in your containerlab topology will not pass any traffic.

When containerlab launches Cisco Catalyst 9000v node the GigabitEthernet0/0 interface of the VM gets assigned 10.0.0.15/24 address from the QEMU DHCP server. This interface is transparently stitched with container's eth0 interface such that users can reach the management plane of the Cisco Catalyst 9000v using containerlab's assigned IP.

Data interfaces GigabitEthernet1/0/1+ need to be configured with IP addressing manually using CLI or other available management interfaces and will appear unset in the CLI:

c9kv(config-if)#do sh ip in br
Interface              IP-Address      OK? Method Status                Protocol
Vlan1                  unassigned      YES unset  administratively down down    
GigabitEthernet0/0     10.0.0.15       YES manual up                    up      
GigabitEthernet1/0/1   unassigned      YES unset  up                    up      
GigabitEthernet1/0/2   unassigned      YES unset  up                    up      
GigabitEthernet1/0/3   unassigned      YES unset  up                    up      
GigabitEthernet1/0/4   unassigned      YES unset  up                    up      
GigabitEthernet1/0/5   unassigned      YES unset  up                    up      
GigabitEthernet1/0/6   unassigned      YES unset  up                    up      
GigabitEthernet1/0/7   unassigned      YES unset  up                    up      
GigabitEthernet1/0/8   unassigned      YES unset  up                    up

Features and options#

ASIC data-plane simulation configuration#

The default ASIC simulation of the node will be UADP. To enable the Q200 simulation or to enable specific features for the UADP simulation, you must provide a vswitch.xml file (with the relevant configuration).

You can do this when building the image with vrnetlab, Please refer to the README file in vrnetlab/cat9kv for more information.

You can also use supply the vswitch.xml file via binds in the containerlab topology file. Refer to the example below.

name: my-cat9kv-lab
topology:
  nodes:
    node1:
      kind: cisco_cat9kv
      image: vrnetlab/vr-cat9kv:17.12.01p
    binds:
      - /path/to/vswitch.xml:/vswitch.xml

Note

You can obtain a vswitch.xml file from the relevant Cisco CML node definitions.

Environment variables#

There are VCPU and RAM environment variables defined. It is not recommended reduce the resources below the required amount. The node will be unable to boot in this case.

The example below assigns 6vCPUs and 20 gigabytes of RAM to the node.

name: my-cat9kv-lab
topology:
  nodes:
    node1:
      kind: cisco_cat9kv
      image: vrnetlab/vr-cat9kv:17.12.01p
    env:
     VCPU: 6
     RAM: 20480