Including unmanaged devices in lab topology

[ssasso]

I have a setup when I want netlab to take care of some network gear equipment config (using the external provider), but at the same time I need to establish peerings with their counterparts which should not be configured by netlab.
(i.e. configure a BGP session on a device controlled by netlab)

I was thinking to use the none device type for that kind of stuff, with sth like:

vrfs:
  RED:
  BLUE:

vlans:
  site1red:
    mode: route
    id: 41
    vrf: RED
    bgp: false
  site1blue:
    mode: route
    id: 61
    vrf: BLUE

module: [ vlan,vrf,ospf,bgp,mpls ]
bgp.as: 65000

nodes:
  pe1:
  site1a:
    device: none
    module: [ vlan,vrf,bgp ]
    bgp.as: 65101
  site1b:
    device: none
    module: [ vlan,vrf,bgp ]
    bgp.as: 65101

links:
- pe1:
    ifname: eth3
    vlan.trunk:
      site1red.ipv4: 172.24.111.33/28
      site1blue.ipv4: 10.211.211.1/28
  site1a:
    vlan.trunk:
      site1red.ipv4: 172.24.111.34/28
      site1blue.ipv4: 10.211.211.11/28
  site1b:
    vlan.trunk:
      site1red.ipv4: 172.24.111.35/28
      site1blue.ipv4: 10.211.211.12/28
  vlan.trunk: [ site1red, site1blue ]

(for this specific example, I need pe1 to have two configured bgp sessions towards 10.211.211.11 and 10.211.211.12.)

But unfortunately the none device does not support vlan, vrf, and bgp.

Do you think it would be a good idea to allow the none device type to support all modules,
or should I use a real platform on all the devices, and the rely on a group of configurable devices to limit the ansible config with -l group?

[jbemmel]

Perhaps we could introduce a device type 'unmanaged' which gets ignored (i.e. does not trigger errors about unsupported modules)?
In the virtual case you'd still need to specify an image to use for example - the 'none' device cannot be instantiated, and is only used for testing Ansible playbooks

[ipspace]

none was a bogus device that I needed in test cases. It is not used in any CI tests and it doesn't matter which modules it supports ;)

If you want to use it to model external devices, then I agree with @jbemmel that it should be renamed to unmanaged, support all modules, and use the tasks/deploy-config/unmanaged.yml task list that would do nothing (or maybe print a message saying not doing this).

There's still the question of netlab initial -o which would have to skip it (maybe we can add the test that netlab_device_type is non-empty (or some such), and the virtualbox/libvirt/clab templates that would have to skip it.

Any takers? BTW, this should go into 1.4.

[ssasso]

I'm taking this, tracking on a specific "issue" (#547).