Topology Defaults

netsim-tools have dozens of system defaults that specify:

  • Default addressing pools

  • Default virtualization provider

  • Module defaults

  • Virtualization provider defaults (configuration file name, port mappings, provider-specific device defaults…)

  • Device parameters (interface names, image names…)

All system defaults, specified in global topology-defaults.yml file (shipped within netsim package directory), could be overwritten with topology- or user defaults:

  • In defaults element of the topology file

  • In topology-defaults.yml file residing in the same directory as the topology file or in the user’s home directory.

The topology defaults value is most commonly used to set default device type; you could also use it to set any other default parameter. For example, the following topology file builds a network of Cisco IOSv devices using a different value for the default IS-IS area:

---
defaults:
  device: iosv
  isis:
    area: 49.0002

...

When augmenting default settings, netsim-tools use a deep dictionary merge, allowing you to overwrite a single setting deep in the hierarchy without affecting any other related settings.

For example, it’s possible to replace the default Vagrant box name for a network device type without changing any other device parameter:

---
defaults.device: eos
defaults.devices.eos.image: arista/vEOS-lab-4.21.14M

Note: If you want to run your topology on multiple virtualization provides, you can set different device image name for every virtualization provider:

---
defaults.device: eos
defaults.devices.eos.libvirt.image: arista/vEOS-lab-4.21.14M
defaults.devices.eos.clab.image: cEOS:latest

Deep Merging

netsim-tools library uses Python Box package to perform recursive merge of configuration dictionaries:

  • Dictionary keys not present in target dictionary are added from the defaults dictionary;

  • Whenever a key in the target dictionary is itself a dictionary, and the same key is present in the defaults dictionary, the merge process recurses, resulting in a recursive merge of child dictionaries.

  • Lists and scalar values are not merged.

User Settings

netsim-tools read system defaults from the system topology-defaults.yml and augment them with the settings from topology-defaults.yml file in the lab directory or user home directory.

For example, to make sure all labs use Arista EOS as the default device type, create the following topology-defaults.yml file in your home directory:

---
device: eos