Libvirt/KVM-based Lab on Linux VM or Bare-Metal Server¶

Building a vagrant-libvirt-based lab might take a bit longer than using Vagrant with Virtualbox, but the extra time is well worth the effort – Vagrant libvirt plugin starts virtual machines in parallel (as opposed to virtualbox plugin which starts them in sequence), resulting in drastically reduced lab power-up time.

Prerequisite Software Installation¶

Libvirt is a Linux-based virtualization management tool. To use it with Vagrant:

Install KVM and libvirt
Install Vagrant
Install vagrant-libvirt plugin with vagrant plugin install libvirt –plugin-version=0.4.1

To simplify the installation process, use netlab install command to install Ansible, vagrant, libvirt, and all their prerequisites (tested on a Ubuntu 20.04 virtual machine):

$ netlab install ubuntu ansible libvirt

The libvirt installation scripts:

Install all software packages required to use the libvirt Vagrant backend (including the vagrant-libvirt plugin)
Adds current user to libvirt group
Configures the vagrant-libvirt network

Tip

The installation scripts use sudo to install system software.

For more details, read A Quick Introduction to Netsim-Tools by Leo Kirchner.

Creating vagrant-libvirt Virtual Network¶

Vagrant libvirt provider connects management interfaces of managed VMs to vagrant-libvirt virtual network. Vagrant can figure out the device IP address based on dynamic DHCP mappings; netsim-tools can’t. To make the Ansible inventory created by netlab create tool work, your virtual network MUST include static DHCP bindings that map management MAC addresses defined in netsim-tools data model into expected IP addresses.

Tip

The vagrant-libvirt virtual network is created as part of netlab install libvirt installation script.

The static DHCP bindings must map MAC addresses 08:4F:A9:00:00:xx into IP addresses 192.168.121.1xx. The easiest way to create the virtual network and static DHCP mappings is to use the netsim/templates/provider/libvirt/vagrant-libvirt.xml file supplied with netsim-tools:

If needed, delete the existing vagrant-libvirt network with virsh net-destroy vagrant-libvirt and virsh net-undefine vagrant-libvirt
Create the management network with virsh net-create path/vagrant-libvirt.xml

You could also use virsh net-edit vagrant-libvirt to edit the XML definition of your existing vagrant-libvirt network – replace the exiting ip element with this XML snippet:

<ip address='192.168.121.1' netmask='255.255.255.0'>
	<dhcp>
	  <range start='192.168.121.2' end='192.168.121.99'/>
	  <host mac='08:4F:A9:00:00:01' ip='192.168.121.101'/>
	  <host mac='08:4F:A9:00:00:02' ip='192.168.121.102'/>
	  <host mac='08:4F:A9:00:00:03' ip='192.168.121.103'/>
	  <host mac='08:4F:A9:00:00:04' ip='192.168.121.104'/>
	  <host mac='08:4F:A9:00:00:05' ip='192.168.121.105'/>
	  <host mac='08:4F:A9:00:00:06' ip='192.168.121.106'/>
	  <host mac='08:4F:A9:00:00:07' ip='192.168.121.107'/>
	  <host mac='08:4F:A9:00:00:08' ip='192.168.121.108'/>
	  <host mac='08:4F:A9:00:00:09' ip='192.168.121.109'/>
	  <host mac='08:4F:A9:00:00:10' ip='192.168.121.110'/>
	  <host mac='08:4F:A9:00:00:11' ip='192.168.121.111'/>
	</dhcp>
</ip>

For more details, see Using Libvirt Provider with Vagrant by Brad Searle.

Testing the Installation¶

The easiest way to test your installation is to use netlab test command. If you prefer to do step-by-step tests, you might find this recipe useful:

Create an empty directory and topology.yml file with the following contents within that directory:

---
defaults:
  device: cumulus

nodes: [ s1, s2, s3 ]
links: [ s1-s2, s2-s3, s1-s2-s3 ]

Create Vagrantfile with netlab create command
Execute vagrant up to spin up three Cumulus VX virtual machines
Connect to the Cumulus VX devices with vagrant ssh
Destroy the lab with vagrant destroy -f

Creating Vagrant Boxes¶

Vagrant relies on boxes (prepackaged VM images), and while it’s possible to download some network device images from Vagrant Cloud, you’ll have to build most of the boxes you’d want to use in your lab.

The Vagrant boxes should have the following names:

Virtual network device	Vagrant box name
Arista vEOS	arista/veos
Arrcus ArcOS	arcos/arcos4.1.1
Cisco IOSv	cisco/iosv
Cisco CRS 1000v	cisco/csr1000v
Cisco Nexus 9300v	cisco/nexus9300v
Cumulus VX	CumulusCommunity/cumulus-vx
Juniper vSRX 3.0	juniper/vsrx3

The only box currently available on Vagrant Cloud is the Cumulus VX box. Vagrant automatically downloads it whenever you use Cumulus VX in your lab topology.

Mutating Virtualbox Boxes¶

Cisco Nexus 9300v and Arista vEOS are available as Virtualbox boxes. To use them with vagrant-libvirt:

Install Vagrant mutate plugin with vagrant plugin install mutate
Download the box file from vendor web site
Install virtualbox version of the box file with vagrant box add filename –name boxname
Transform virtualbox box into libvirt box with vagrant mutate boxname libvirt
Remove the virtualbox box with vagrant box remove boxname –provider virtualbox command.

Building Your Own Boxes¶

Brad Searle published box-building recipes for the following platforms:

Pete Crocker published similar recipe for Fortinet firewalls (not yet supported by netsim-tools, PR welcome).

Notes:

If you’re experiencing high CPU utilization with Cisco CSR, set halt_poll_ns to zero.
For more Vagrant details, watch the Network Simulation Tools part of Network Automation Tools webinar.

Notes on Arista EOS vagrant-libvirt Box¶

You could use the virtualbox Arista EOS box and mutate it into a libvirt box, but the latest version of Arista vEOS available as Vagrant box for VirtualBox is 4.21.14M.

I used the recipe published by Brad Searle and modified it slightly to make it work flawlessly with EOS 4.25.0. After applying Brad’s initial configuration (do not configure his event handlers), execute these commands to generate PKI key and certificate:

security pki key generate rsa 2048 default
security pki certificate generate self-signed default key default ↩
  param common-name Arista

After generating PKI certificate add these configuration commands to enable NETCONF and RESTCONF

management api http-commands
 no shutdown
!
management api netconf
 transport ssh default
!
management api restconf
 transport https default
  ssl profile default
  port 6040
!
management security
 ssl profile default
  certificate default key default

Finally, remove custom shell from vagrant user with

no user vagrant shell

Vagrant will be totally confused when it sees something that looks like a Linux box but doesn’t behave like one, so add these commands to Vagrantfile (already included in eos-domain.j2 template):

config.ssh.shell = "bash"
config.vm.guest = :freebsd

Notes on Juniper vSRX Vagrantfile template¶

The Vagrant template for vSRX uses default_prefix libvirt parameter to set the domain (VM) name and uses the VM name to set libvirt vCPU quota.

The template has been tested with Vagrant version 2.2.14. Some earlier versions of Vagrant generated VM names using a slightly different algorithm (the underscore between default_prefix and VM name was added automatically) and might thus generate an unexpected VM name. To fix that problem remove parts of vsrx-domain.j2 template:

Remove domain.default_prefix parameter (default value should generate the expected VM name) or
Remove the whole CPU-limiting logic (trading CPU cycles for simplicity)

Notes on Arrcus ArcOS vagrant-libvirt Box and Ansible Collections¶

Please reach out to your Arrcus Customer Engineering Representative or Contact Arrcus for access to the Arrcus Vagrant Box file and ArcOS Ansible collections.