NSO + NED for non-production use

[Denis Pointer]

Hello,

So a few of the sessions I attended this year a CLUS had some content on NSO, and a lot of the DevNet Workshops leveraged NSO Netsim for development environment.  with NSO being free for non-production use,  included in some the blue prints for the new DevNet certs I figured I'd give it a go but I got stuck and I am wondering if I am missing something obvious.

I downloaded NSO 5.1.0.1 from https://developer.cisco.com/docs/nso/#!getting-nso/downloads for Linux

From there I started working on the NSO Basics learning module listed on that same page

Started out fine, however when it comes to creating a device it says to use ned-id cisco-ios, but that is not an option for me: I see lsa-netconf, netcong, and smp

admin@ncs(config)# devices device R1 address 10.10.10.1 authgroup myauthgroup device-type cli ned-id ?
Description: The NED Identity
Possible completions:
  lsa-netconf  netconf  snmp

What I have not been able to figure out is where the ned-id's come from

looking through the PDF's in the docs folder, specifically the administration guide it appears you can specify you can specify a software repository to download the NED's from, specifically https://support.tail-f.com/delivery is listed, but that requires credentials.

Given this, I am drawing a conclusion that while NSO is free for non production use the NED's are not? Am I correct in this conclusion or am I missing something?

[gschudel · Accepted solution]

Hey

not clear how you installed NSO (local or system install), or what those "learn" things are... some people go to the ./doc/pdf dir and start with "Getting Started" .. 

It sounds like you might have a "local install" and i'm imagining that you then (also) created an "ncs-run" or similar dir...

I would guess that there are "no NEDs" in your ./packages directory... (it sounds like this is the case)..

If you look in the install directory, under "packages/neds" you will see nine different NEDs... you can copy these 

into your "running directory" ./packages and in nso "request packages reload"

you can see what's loaded with "show packages package oper-status" then... (all should be "up")

and you can create netsims etc. and get a feel for things.

hth

[Denis Pointer]

Hello,

Primarily I was working with the Local Install, I did try the system install in a VM though appeared to get the same results.  I did look through documents docs folder and the getting started guide, but still felt I was missing something

There are 9 NEDs in the install directory <NCS Install dir>/packages/neds

a10-acos-cli-3.0 cisco-ios-cli-3.0 cisco-iosxr-cli-3.0 cisco-nx-cli-3.0 juniper-junos-nc-3.0
alu-sr-cli-3.4 cisco-ios-cli-3.8 cisco-iosxr-cli-3.5 dell-ftos-cli-3.0

I did look at those, however, the readme's on those specifically say "This NED is used for running the NSO examples and should not be used!" am I just taking that too literally then? is that the NED I should be using?  If that's the case then that's easy enough then, I can continue on from here.  Is there a way to rename the packages (i.e. cisco-ios instead of cisco-ios-cli-3.8) so it matches the guides?

Should note I did copy the cisco-ios-cli-3.8  and iosxr over and that did work, I see those as options now, and netsim worked as well...

admin@ncs(config)# devices device R1 address 10.10.10.1 authgroup myauthgroup device-type cli ned-id ?
Description: The NED Identity
Possible completions:
  cisco-ios-cli-3.8  cisco-iosxr-cli-3.5  lsa-netconf  netconf  snmp

[gschudel]

what is meant by "...should not be used"... is that the NEDs provided w/ the NSO distribution are "not new..." they are "old-ish"... they are only there (included) to support running the "examples" in the ./examples directory and any basic messing around you might do. Those NEDs are real and functional - they just won't have any updates that have been integrated along the way. So.. "play away" on examples and (maybe) in the lab... but don't put them in production.

** in a local install, NEDs (and models) go in ./packages

** in a system install, NEDs (and models) go  in /var/opt/ncs/pacakges

[Denis Pointer]

That makes sense, they are fine for non-production, lab/development use but not suitable for production use. 

Thank you for your help :)

[KJ Rossavik]

Also, these NEDs are fine for exploring the examples that come with NSO, and with netsim, but they won't work against real devices.

[andrewyager]

I had this exact problem too.

It looked like NCS had started properly as I could use the CLI and do some things but upon checking the logs there were Java VM issues.

Turned out I had forgotten to install Java.

This was on Ubuntu 18 and fixed by installing headless version of Java:

sudo apt-get install default-jdk
sudo apt-get install ant

Similar to here: http://blog.jonascollen.se/scripts/installing-nso/