What are the limitations of the free NSO evaluation download?

[KJ Rossavik]

Yesterday I posted a blog post with the titilating title "Get NSO for Free". Predictably we are getting questions about this, so here are questions and answers regarding this

[KJ Rossavik]

The free NSO download is for evaluation purposes only, and cannot be used for any production use. It comes without any support, although you can of course ask questions here on the NSO Developer Hub.

The NSO package comes with a lot of examples (in the examples.ncs directory in the installation), and these have NEDs that are sufficient to run these examples. You may also connect to real (physical or virtual) devices in your lab. They are however limited, and have nowhere near the coverage of the production NEDs. For access to production NEDs you need to purchase lab licenses for NSO and the required NEDs.

The current free NSO eval package is 4.7.0. This is the complete NSO server package. We will periodically, but infrequently, replace the server version. However, if you require any other version then you need to purchase a lab license, which provides access to all currently supported versions.

[arno0912]

Could you be more specific about what we can and can't do in the trial? For example, should I be able to configure more than one device in the same command? I expected this command to change the description of all devices that have eth1, but it returns an error.

admin@ncs(config)# devices device config interfaces interface eth1 config description teste
-----------------------------------------^
syntax error: element does not exist

Something via WEB interface. Under devices device I expected to see the interfaces for example, but I only see the routers that I had configured. Is it a limitation of evaluation?

[u.avsec]

Evaluation comes with pretty much full functionality. It will start complaining after 90 days though.

The reason why your command doesn't work is that you need to use a bit of regex for device names

admin@ncs(config)# devices device * <TAB>
Possible completions:
  address                        IP address or host name for the management
                                 interface
  authgroup                      Authentication credentials for the device
  commit-queue                   Control settings for the commit queue
  config                         NCS copy of the device configuration
  connect-retries                Retry connect on transient errors
  connect-timeout                Timeout in seconds for new connections
  description                    Free form textual description
  device-profile

* Might not work if you have different device platforms

[arno0912]

Hi, Thanks for you answer. You are right, using the "*", I was able to set more than one device at same command. 

And about the WEB interface? Shouldn't show all devices, like interfaces under devices?