Saturday, January 23, 2021

Automating 30K+ Device configurations from 1 platform to another

Hi my fellow networkerz,

A new project has come down the pipeline for the year. We are looking to build a solution to programatically take in a configuration of one device and generate a configuration for a different, yet similar platform. The configuration will not drastically change. I am reaching out here to find out if anyone's done something like this and what worked and what would you have done better/differently?

This is not as complex as going from say, a Cisco config > Juniper. More like Cisco IOS > IOSxR. Although similar...they are very different.

I hope this is the right place to ask. Anyway, I am Sr Eng with focus on automation. My issue isn't producing a tool, but I would appreciate to hear peoples war stories on similar projects. At first thought, I was simply gonna take a flat file and convert it all to structured data -> JSON and then take that and do the usual, render against J2 templates that are based off a new golden config. However....

One thing I thought about this morning, while looking at deltas: Migrating L3VPNs/L2VPNs/L3 Interfaces to new platforms with completely different port assignments (different line cards) and how do I keep their relational connection? This includes interface configuration, underlying L2 service attached to the service, etc. This is where I need ideas.

IF anyone knows of any similar open source projects out there or blogs that talk about something similar, that would be great if you could share. This project will involve 10K devices to start. Want to make sure I do this right from the start ;)



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