Installation#

To start deploying labs orchestrated by KNE a user needs to install kne command line utility and have a k8s cluster available. Follow KNE setup instructions to install kne and its dependencies.

By following the setup instructions, you should have the following utilities successfully installed:

❯ kne help
Kubernetes Network Emulation CLI.  Works with meshnet to create
layer 2 topology used by containers to layout networks in a k8s
environment.

Usage:
kne [command]

--snip--

❯ kind version
kind v0.14.0 go1.17.2 linux/amd64

Cluster deployment#

Once the necessary utilities are installed, proceed with the KNE cluster installation. KNE cluster consists of the following high-level components:

• Kind cluster: A kind-based k8s cluster to allow automated deployment.
• Load Balancer service: An Load Balancer service used in the KNE cluster to allow for external access to the nodes. Supported LB services: MetalLB.
• CNI: configuration of a CNI plugin used in the KNE cluster to layout L2 links between the network nodes deployed in a cluster. Supported CNI plugins: meshnet-cni.
• External controllers: an optional list of external controllers that manage custom resources.

KNE provides a cluster manifest file along with the command to install cluster components using kne deploy command¹.

Using kne deploy and following the cluster deployment instructions, cluster installation boils down to a single command:

kne deploy deploy/kne/kind-bridge.yaml # (1)!

1. run from the root of the kne repository. Also remove the

The deployment process should finish with the Deployment complete, ready for topology log message, indicating that every component of a KNE cluster has been successfully deployed. At this point, it is helpful to check that the cluster and its components are running healthy.

❯ kind get clusters
kne

❯ kubectl config current-context
kind-kne

❯ kubectl get daemonset -n meshnet
NAME      DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   NODE SELECTOR              AGE
meshnet   1         1         1       1            1           kubernetes.io/arch=amd64   8m55s

❯ kubectl get pod -n metallb-system
NAME                          READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
controller-55d86f5f7c-bl9kx   1/1     Running   0          12m
speaker-zsj29                 1/1     Running   0          11m

SR Linux controller#

Next step is to install SR Linux controller that provides the necessary APIs for KNE to deploy SR Linux nodes as part of the network topology. SR Linux controller is an open-source project hosted at srl-labs/srl-controller repository and can be easily installed on a k8s cluster as per its installation instructions:

kubectl apply -k https://github.com/srl-labs/srl-controller/config/default

When srl-controller is installed successfully, it can be seen in its namespace as a deployment:

❯ kubectl get deployments -n srlinux-controller
NAME                                    READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
srlinux-controller-controller-manager   1/1     1            1           12m

License#

If a user intends to run a topology with chassis-based SR Linux nodes², they must install a valid license.

The same lab can be used with unlicensed IXR-D/H variants; to adapt the lab to unlicensed SR Linux variants users need to:

1. delete model: "ixr6e" string from the KNE topology file

2. remove the openconfig configuration blob from the startup-config file

   remove this blob

   "management": {
     "srl_nokia-openconfig:openconfig": {
       "admin-state": "enable"
     }
   }
   

Image load#

In the case of a kind cluster, it is advised to load container images to the kind cluster preemptively. Doing so will ensure that necessary images are present in the cluster when KNE creates network topologies.

To load srlinux container image to the kind cluster:

kind load docker-image ghcr.io/nokia/srlinux:22.6.4 --name kne

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