Lab as Code - Part2

Monday, 24 March 2025   29 min read

This is the follow on to part1 where I was looking at how easy it is to deploy initial EVE-NG and CML lab setups from a declarative YAML file. Although both products are not really designed with that in mind I did manage to accomplish it with a relatively minimal amount of complexity in the topology file using a custom lab_builder tool. Next up is to give it a go with containerlab and netlab, I am expecting these to be a whole lot simpler as lab as code is the very ethos that they are designed for.

Lab as Code - Part1

Friday, 28 February 2025   28 min read

I wrote a post a while back about how the world of labbing changed during my time in networking, this is a follow on to see what options I have in terms of ‘labbing as Code’. I want a way to declaratively deploy the initial lab setup (devices, links, addressing, remote access, etc) so that I can concentrate on the features I am actually trying to lab. My idea is to try and use existing tools rather than writing my own, the following repo has all the code and files I used as part of this blog and part2.