Proposal: multiserver plugin to easily split topologies across physical servers

[Muddyblack]

Idea

So I already once told about the idea of having a plugin for multiserver support.
I want to run larger or heavier topologies across multiple physical servers.

I now took my external wrapper-script and turned it into an original netlab plugin.
This outsources the logic out of my project using the direct netlab source (which just is a cleaner approach than what i had before) and maybe someone else might be interested. Who knows.

Key design aspects:

• Zero Core Changes: All logic is housed entirely in the plugin (netsim/extra/multiserver/).
• No changes to netlab up: Central workstation generates a filtered snapshot (netlab.snapshot.pickle) for each server. Remote servers then deploy normally using sudo netlab up --snapshot.
• Interconnects: Uses Containerlab's native VXLAN endpoints for P2P links and local host-level VXLAN tunnels for multi-access links.
• Provider Limitation: Currently supports the clab provider only.

Detailed configuration syntax, assignment modes (explicit/auto), and the workflow are documented in the accompanying PR's documentation file: docs/plugins/multiserver.md.

I am not sure if it really is worthy as an official netlab plugin so let me know if it is better to keep as my own.
As it does only generate a config...
Sadly this only covers the containerlab-provider.

Maybe you have ideas but this is my attempt for now.

[ipspace]

I love the idea. Wanted to do something along these lines for ages. Thanks a million!

Will need "a few" days to look at the code.

[Muddyblack]

I am sure you will have a lot of recommendations 😁

But glad that it is something you are looking into :)