External lab

This document describes how to use an external lab (physical or virtual) to evaluate, develop and test on Inmanta Connect. There are three steps in this process:

  1. Ensure that the lab network supports Inmanta Connect

  2. Installing the Inmanta Service Orchestrator

  3. Load Inmanta Connect in the Inmanta Service Orchestrator

Support Inmanta Connect network

Inmanta Connect requires a number of things from your network:

  1. Each device has a management interface that is reachable by the orchestrator. For each vendor the netconf interface needs to be reachable.

  2. Inmanta Connect only manages the endpoints of the services. This means that it assumes that there is backbone connectivity between all routers on which endpoints are managed (PE routers). It also assumes that all the required peerings and protocols are enabled between all PEs. What this means depends on the selected network backends (LDP, EVPN, …).

  3. Document the endpoints in a compatible inventory. Inmanta Connect needs to know all the user connects to the network: ports (and ethernet segments), network elements (logical devices and management interface details). The quickest way to get started is using our built-in yaml inventory and pick one of files included in the built-in lab.

Install the service orchestrator and connect

Inmanta Connect is built on the Inmanta Service Orchestrator. The first step is to install this orchestrator and then load Inmanta Connect. The current version of Inmanta Connect excepts version Inmanta Service Orchestrator 4. There are several options to install the orchestrator:

It is important to correctly set the router credentials. The inventory supplies Inmanta Connect with the names of the environment variables. These variables are set in the environment file of the service orchestrator (The documentation explains this for an RPM install and containers

Load Inmanta Connect

The final step is to load Inmanta Connect on the service orchestrator. There are mainly two methods to perform this:

  • Customize the test suite and run it against the lab. The test suite will deploy Inmanta Connect with all your customizations.

  • Customize the inmanta connect template project and load it in an environment.