Nautobot to Arista CloudVision Sync

The code in this repository has been migrated to the Nautobot SSoT Repository as an integration - read more about it in the SSoT Docs! As of August 2023 this repository has been FROZEN - all development / issues / discussions for this integration are in the Nautobot SSoT Repository going forward.

A plugin for Nautobot that allows synchronization of data directly between CloudVision and Nautobot. From Nautobot into CloudVision, it synchronizes user device tags. From CloudVision into Nautobot, it synchronizes devices, their interfaces, associated IP addresses, and their system tags. Here is a table showing the data mappings when syncing from CloudVision.

CloudVision System Tags	Nautobot Device Custom Field
topology_network_type	Topology Network Type
mlag	mlag
mpls	mpls
model	Device Type*
systype	systype
serialnumber	Device Serial Number
pimbidir	pimbidir
sflow	sFlow
eostrain	EOS Train
tapagg	TAP Aggregation
pim	pim
bgp	bgp
terminattr	TerminAttr Version
ztp	ztp
eos	EOS Version**
topology_type	Topology Type

*The model system tag is mapped to the device type model in Nautobot.

**If the Device Lifecycle plug-in is found to be installed, a matching Version will be created with a RelationshipAssociation connecting the device and that Version.

When syncing User tags from Nautobot to CloudVision the data mappings are as follows:

Nautobot	CloudVision
Interface	Interface
----------	-------------
Tags	Device Tags

This plugin is an extension of the Nautobot Single Source of Truth (SSoT) and you must have that plugin installed before installing this extension.

Screenshots

This screenshot shows the CloudVision to Nautobot home page. This contains a list of all the system tags from CloudVision and how they map to custom fields in Nautobot. This also displays your plugin configuration and the sync history.

This screenshot shows the Nautobot to CloudVision home page. It also contains data mappings, plugin configuration and sync history.

Installation

The plugin is available as a Python package in PyPI and can be installed with pip

pip install nautobot_ssot_aristacv

The plugin is compatible with Nautobot 1.0.0 and higher

To ensure Nautobot to Arista CloudVision Sync is automatically re-installed during future upgrades, create a file named local_requirements.txt (if not already existing) in the Nautobot root directory (alongside requirements.txt) and list the nautobot_ssot_aristacv package:

# echo nautobot_ssot_aristacv >> local_requirements.txt

Once installed, the plugin needs to be enabled in your nautobot_configuration.py and plugin settings need to be defined.

# In your configuration.py
PLUGINS = ["nautobot_ssot", "nautobot_ssot_aristacv"]

PLUGINS_CONFIG = {
  "nautobot_ssot" : {
    "hide_example_jobs": True,
  },
  "nautobot_ssot_aristacv": {
    "cvp_token": os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_ARISTACV_TOKEN", ""),
    "cvp_host": os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_ARISTACV_HOST", ""),
    "cvp_port": os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_ARISTACV_PORT", 443),
    "cvp_user": os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_ARISTACV_USERNAME", ""),
    "cvp_password": os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_ARISTACV_PASSWORD", ""),
    "verify": is_truthy(os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_ARISTACV_VERIFY", True)),
    "from_cloudvision_default_site": "",
    "from_cloudvision_default_device_role": "",
    "from_cloudvision_default_device_role_color": "",
    "delete_devices_on_sync": is_truthy(os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_ARISTACV_DELETE_ON_SYNC", False)),
    "apply_import_tag": is_truthy(os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_ARISTACV_IMPORT_TAG", False)),
    "import_active": is_truthy(os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_ARISTACV_IMPORT_ACTIVE", False)),
    "create_controller": is_truthy(os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_ARISTACV_CREATE_CONTROLLER", False)),
    "controller_site": os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_ARISTACV_CONTROLLER_SITE", ""),
    "hostname_patterns": [""],
    "site_mappings": {},
    "role_mappings": {},
  }
}

All plugin settings are defined in the picture above as an example. Only some will be needed as described below.

Upon installation, this plugin creates the following custom fields in Nautobot:

• arista_bgp
• arista_eos
• arista_eostrain
• arista_mlag
• arista_mpls
• arista_pim
• arista_pimbidir
• arista_sflow
• arista_systype
• arista_tapagg
• arista_terminattr
• arista_topology_network_type
• arista_topology_type
• arista_ztp

While these contain the prefix "arista" in the custom field admin portal, when looking at them on a device the prefix is removed.

Other custom fields may need to be created by the user. When a sync is run and a system tag for a device in CloudVision is found without a corresponding custom field, the sync log will display a message. To have that data synced, a custom field must be created in the Admin UI using the given name in the message.

The plugin can connect to either on-premise or a cloud instance of CloudVision. To connect to an on-premise instance, you must set the following variables in the Nautobot configuration file.

Configuration Variable	Type	Usage
cvp_host	string	Hostname or ip address of the onprem instance of CloudVision.
cvp_port	string	gRPC port (defaults to 8443, but this port has changed to 443 as of CVP 2021.3.0)
cvp_user	string	The username used to connect to the on-prem instance of CloudVision.
cvp_password	string	The password used by the user specified above.
cvp_token	string	Token to be used when connecting to CloudVision.
verify	boolean	If False, the plugin will download the certificate from CloudVision and trust it for gRPC calls.

To connect to a cloud instance of CloudVision you must set the following variable:

Configuration Variable	Type	Usage	Default
cvaas_url	string	URL used to connect to your CvaaS instance.	www.arista.io:443

When syncing from CloudVision, this plugin will create new Arista devices that do not exist in Nautobot. When creating new devices in Nautobot, a site, device role, device role color, device status, and device are required. You may define which values to use by configuring the following values in your nautobot_config.py file. If you define a default_device_role and default_device_status that already exist, the default color value for both of those will be ignored as it will pull that information from Nautobot.

Configuration Variable	Type	Usage	Default
from_cloudvision_default_site	string	Default site created when syncing new devices to Nautobot.	cloudvision_imported
from_cloudvision_default_device_role	string	Default role created when syncing new devices to Nautobot.	network
from_cloudvision_default_device_role_color	string	Default role color used for default role.	ff0000

When these variables are not defined in the plugin settings, the plugin will use the default values mentioned.

When an Arista device exists in Nautobot but not in CloudVision, this plugin can either delete or leave the device in Nautobot. That behavior can be set with the following variable in the nautobot_config.py file.

Configuration Variable	Type	Usage	Default
delete_devices_on_sync	boolean	If true, devices in Nautobot with device type manufacturer name set to Arista that do not exist in CloudVision but do exist in Nautobot upon sync will be deleted.	False

When this variable is not defined in the plugin settings, the plugin will default to using False.

Optionally, an import tag with the name cloudvision_imported can be applied to devices that are imported from CloudVision.

Configuration Variable	Type	Usage	Default
apply_import_tag	boolean	Apply import tag to devices imported from CloudVision.	False

If apply_import_tag is set to True, the tag value that is applied to devices is cloudvision_imported.

In addition, you can control whether only active devices are imported or whether all devices regardless of status are imported.

Configuration Variable	Type	Usage	Default
import_active	boolean	Only import active devices from CloudVision.	False

There is also the option of having your CloudVision instance created within Nautobot and linked to the Devices managed by the instance. If the create_controller setting is True then a CloudVision Device will be created and Relationships created to the imported Devices from CVP. The controller_site setting allows you to specify the name of the Site you wish the Device to be created in. If this setting is blank a new CloudVision Site will be created and the Device will be placed in it.

Configuration Variable	Type	Usage	Default
create_controller	boolean	Create CloudVision Device in Nautobot.	False
controller_site	string	The Site to associate with CloudVision Device.	""

Finally, there is the option to parse device hostname's for codes that indicate the assigned site or device role. This is done through a combination of a few settings. First, the hostname_patterns setting defines a list of regex patterns that define your hostname structure. These patterns must include a named capture group using the site and role key to identify the portion of the hostname that indicates those pieces of data, ie (?P<site>\w+) and (?P<role>\w+). Once those pieces are extracted they are then evaluated against the relevant map, ie the value for the site capture group is looked for in the site_mappings dictionary expecting the value to be a key with the map value being the name of the Site. If the Site doesn't exist it will be created in Staging status. For the Device Role, it will be created if it doesn't exist in Nautobot. Please note that the hostname is converted to all lowercase when the parsing is performed so the keys are expected to be all lowercase too.

Configuration Variable	Type	Usage	Default
hostname_patterns	List[str]	Define the portions of a hostname that indicate site/role.	[]
site_mappings	dict	Define the site name associated with code in hostname.	{}
role_mappings	dict	Define the role name associated with code in hostname.	{}

As the Device hostname is used as the identifier for Device objects any change in hostname implies a new Device and thus should trigger a deletion and creation of a new Device in Nautobot. For this reason, the hostname parsing feature is not done during updates and only at initial creation of the Device. If you need to correct the Site or Role for a Device after initial creation you will need to manually correct it or delete it and run the import Job again.

Usage

This extension can sync data both to and from Nautobot. Once the plugin has been installed successfully two new options are available under the Nautobot Single Source of Truth (SSoT) plugin.

Please be aware that interfaces that are part of a breakout bundle, ie a 40G port broken out into 4x10G ports, will show the base interface SFP transceiver as the interface type. This is due to the way interfaces and transceivers are returned from CloudVision.

Syncing From CloudVision

When loading Nautobot data, this tool only loads devices with a device type that has a manufacturer of "Arista"

When syncing data from CloudVision to Nautobot, devices along with their interfaces and tags are synchronized. When a device exists in CloudVision that doesn't exist in Nautobot, this tool creates the device in Nautobot with the default values specified in the configuration file. When a device exists in Nautobot that does not exist in CloudVision, this tool can be configured to either delete or skip that device. You can watch the below video for an example.

When syncing data from Nautobot to CloudVision, the tag data in Nautobot is copied into User Tags in CloudVision. You can watch the video below for an example.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcomed and automatically built and tested against multiple versions of Python and multiple versions of Nautobot through GitHub Actions.

The project is packaged with a light development environment based on docker-compose to help with the local development of the project and to run the tests within a Docker container.

The project is following Network to Code software development guidelines and is leveraging:

• Black, Pylint, Bandit and pydocstyle for Python linting and formatting.
• Django unit test to ensure the plugin is working properly.

Development Environment

The development environment can be used in 2 ways. First, with a local poetry environment if you wish to develop outside of Docker. Second, inside of a docker container.

Invoke tasks

The PyInvoke library is used to provide some helper commands based on the environment. There are a few configuration parameters that can be passed to PyInvoke to override the default configuration:

• nautobot_ver: the version of Nautobot to use as a base for any built docker containers (default: develop-latest)
• project_name: the default docker compose project name (default: aristacv-sync)
• python_ver: the version of Python to use as a base for any built docker containers (default: 3.6)
• local: a boolean flag indicating if invoke tasks should be run on the host or inside the docker containers (default: False, commands will be run in docker containers)
• compose_dir: the full path to a directory containing the project compose files
• compose_files: a list of compose files applied in order (see Multiple Compose files for more information)

Using PyInvoke these configuration options can be overridden using several methods. Perhaps the simplest is simply setting an environment variable INVOKE_ARISTACV-SYNC_VARIABLE_NAME where VARIABLE_NAME is the variable you are trying to override. The only exception is compose_files, because it is a list it must be overridden in a YAML file. There is an example invoke.yml in this directory which can be used as a starting point.

Local Poetry Development Environment

1. Copy development/creds.example.env to development/creds.env (This file will be ignored by git and docker)
2. Uncomment the POSTGRES_HOST, REDIS_HOST, and NAUTOBOT_ROOT variables in development/creds.env
3. Create an invoke.yml with the following contents at the root of the repo:

---
aristacv_sync:
  local: true
  compose_files:
    - "docker-compose.requirements.yml"

4. Run the following commands:

poetry shell
poetry install
export $(cat development/dev.env | xargs)
export $(cat development/creds.env | xargs)

5. You can now run nautobot-server commands as you would from the Nautobot documentation for example to start the development server:

nautobot-server runserver 0.0.0.0:8080 --insecure

Nautobot server can now be accessed at http://localhost:8080.

Docker Development Environment

This project is managed by Python Poetry and has a few requirements to setup your development environment:

1. Install Poetry, see the Poetry Documentation for your operating system.
2. Install Docker, see the Docker documentation for your operating system.

Once you have Poetry and Docker installed you can run the following commands to install all other development dependencies in an isolated python virtual environment:

poetry shell
poetry install
invoke start

Nautobot server can now be accessed at http://localhost:8080.

CLI Helper Commands

The project is coming with a CLI helper based on invoke to help set up the development environment. The commands are listed below in 3 categories dev environment, utility and testing.

Each command can be executed with invoke <command>. Environment variables INVOKE_ARISTACV-SYNC_PYTHON_VER and INVOKE_ARISTACV-SYNC_NAUTOBOT_VER may be specified to override the default versions. Each command also has its own help invoke <command> --help

Docker dev environment

  build            Build all docker images.
  debug            Start Nautobot and its dependencies in debug mode.
  destroy          Destroy all containers and volumes.
  restart          Restart Nautobot and its dependencies.
  start            Start Nautobot and its dependencies in detached mode.
  stop             Stop Nautobot and its dependencies.

Utility

  cli              Launch a bash shell inside the running Nautobot container.
  create-user      Create a new user in django (default: admin), will prompt for password.
  makemigrations   Run Make Migration in Django.
  nbshell          Launch a nbshell session.

Testing

  bandit           Run bandit to validate basic static code security analysis.
  black            Run black to check that Python files adhere to its style standards.
  flake8           This will run flake8 for the specified name and Python version.
  pydocstyle       Run pydocstyle to validate docstring formatting adheres to NTC defined standards.
  pylint           Run pylint code analysis.
  tests            Run all tests for this plugin.
  unittest         Run Django unit tests for the plugin.

Questions

For any questions or comments, please check the FAQ first and feel free to swing by the Network to Code slack channel (channel #networktocode). Sign up here