Add support for Huawei qcow virtual router

[netomat]

Aloha,
would it be possible to add Huawei virtual router?
For example Huawei NE40E VRP
I know the images are not public available, same as some Cisco images.
I have a working virsh xml image, which works nativ with qemu / virsh
And there should be also support in Ansible to configure them.
Im happy to try to add this, if some could give me a hint how to start
Marcel

[ssasso]

Hello @netomat ,

First of all you need to define if you want your image to be available as a Vagrant box or Containerlab image (to be used with that specific "provider".

I.e., for clab provider, you can build the image following https://containerlab.dev/manual/kinds/huawei_vrp/

After that, you can have a look at https://netlab.tools/dev/devices/ to understand how to "make netlab aware of the new platform".

You will need to define a couple of Ansible "include actions" and define the Jinja templates for the basic configs you want to support.

You can have a look at netlab dev documentation or take existing actions and templates as reference point.

Welcome onboard! :-)

[ipspace]

First of all you need to define if you want your image to be available as a Vagrant box or Containerlab image (to be used with that specific "provider".

I would suggest going with the Containerlab image if the vrnetlab build process works.

After that, you can have a look at https://netlab.tools/dev/devices/ to understand how to "make netlab aware of the new platform".

In particular, add "something.yml" with the desired parameters to the netsim/devices folder. That should be enough to bring the lab up. After that, the device configuration (netlab initial) will crash because it won't know how to configure the device, so you'll have to add a task list to the netsim/ansible/tasks/deploy-config directory.

Next, that task list will probably crash because it won't find the configuration template. At the very minimum, you have to have one in the netsim/ansible/templates/initial directory.

After that, have fun adding support for individual configuration modules. OSPF and BGP are usually a decent starting point.

And as @ssasso said: welcome!

[netomat]

Hi,
thanks for your helpful and quick responses!
A friend of me, Stephan is already trying to get the new NE40E image running in Containerlab / vrnetlab
Huawei changed internally somethings like disc-controller to SATA.
As soon as he/we will have this running, I will start trying to integrate into Netlab.
Thanks Marcel