Intro

This repo is mainly inspired of this repo on IOS XE.

It gives an overview of pyATS possibilities. As any overview, it's not intended to be exhaustive.

Pre-requisites

Testbed

We're using the always-on DevNet sandboxes in the testbed.yaml file. More information about DevNet sandboxes here:

http://devnetsandbox.cisco.com/RM/Topology

We will be using the IOS XR sandbox for the exercices attached. Feel free to use others.

Dependances

To install the right packages, please run the command below:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Exercices

0. Get CLI show command output

In the first exercice, we will connect to the device and get an unstructued show command output (ex: show ip interface brief).

Output example

Interface                      IP-Address      Status          Protocol Vrf-Name
Loopback100                    1.1.1.100       Up              Up       default 
Loopback200                    1.1.1.200       Up              Up       default 
Loopback999                    unassigned      Up              Up       default 
MgmtEth0/RP0/CPU0/0            10.10.20.175    Up              Up       default 
GigabitEthernet0/0/0/0         unassigned      Shutdown        Down     default 
GigabitEthernet0/0/0/1         unassigned      Shutdown        Down     default 
GigabitEthernet0/0/0/2         unassigned      Shutdown        Down     default 
GigabitEthernet0/0/0/3         unassigned      Shutdown        Down     default 
GigabitEthernet0/0/0/4         unassigned      Shutdown        Down     default 
GigabitEthernet0/0/0/5         unassigned      Shutdown        Down     default 
GigabitEthernet0/0/0/6         unassigned      Shutdown        Down     default

Complete instructions

Complete instructions can be found here

1. Get parsed show command output

In the second exercice, we will leverage Genie parsers to get a parsed output (JSON). Complete list of interfaces.

Output example

Loopback333 -- 3.3.3.3
Loopback99 -- 99.99.99.99
Loopback11 -- 1.2.3.1
GigabitEthernet2 -- Unassigned
GigabitEthernet1 -- 10.10.20.48
GigabitEthernet3 -- Unassigned

Complete instructions

Complete instructions can be found here

Genie parsers documentation

https://pubhub.devnetcloud.com/media/genie-feature-browser/docs/#/parsers

pyATS documentation

Official documentation

pyATS documentation can be found here:

https://pubhub.devnetcloud.com/media/pyats/docs/getting_started/index.html

List of supported platforms

The list of supported platforms can be found here:

https://pubhub.devnetcloud.com/media/unicon/docs/user_guide/supported_platforms.html

Typical errors

Below a list of errors I encountered and the resolution. The list is not aimed to be exhaustive.

Testbed file is not in the folder of execution

! output omitted
pyats.utils.yaml.exceptions.LoadError: Content of 'testbed.yaml' failed to load into a dict.

Hostname and testbed mismatch

The name of the device in your testbed, and the hostname MUST match. It's case sensitive.

unicon.core.errors.TimeoutError: timeout occurred:

Otherwise, you can also set the learn_hostname argument to True.

device.connect(learn_hostname=True)

More information in the documentation below:

https://pubhub.devnetcloud.com/media/unicon/docs/user_guide/connection.html

Don't print the default commands

Don't print the show version, show running-configuration and the output.

device.connect(init_exec_commands=[],
               init_config_commands=[],
               log_stdout=False)

device.learn('platform')

platform.os has the following values for IOSXE and IOSXR:

• iosxe >> lower case
• IOSXR >> upper case

diconnect() quickly

To avoid waiting ~10 seconds to disconnect from the device, you can edit your testbed.yaml file as such:

    connections:
      cli:
        protocol: telnet
        ip: 10.1.1.1
        settings:
          GRACEFUL_DISCONNECT_WAIT_SEC: 0
          POST_DISCONNECT_WAIT_SEC: 0

More info here:

https://pubhub.devnetcloud.com/media/unicon/docs/user_guide/connection.html