NETCONF Plug-and-Play Simulator
Overview
This project builds a modular engine that allows the creation of NETCONF-enabled devices simulators, either physical (PNF) and virtual (VNF).
Basically it's a docker container running Sysrepo and Netopeer2 servers enhanced with a plugger script that, at start-time, performs the following actions:
- Configures TLS and SSH secure accesses to the Netopeer2 server;
- Installs multiple YANG models into sysrepo datastore;
- Launches the corresponding subscriber applications.
The picture below unveils the architecture of this solution.
A YANG module contains the following files:
| Filename | Purpose |
|---|---|
model.yang | The YANG model specified according to RFC-6020. Alternatively, you can use your model's name as a basename for this file. Example: mynetconf.yang. |
data.json or data.xml | An optional data file used to initialize your model. |
subscriber.py | The Python 3 application that implements the behavioral aspects of the YANG model. |
requirements.txt | [Optional] Additional Python packages specified in the Requirements File Format. |
Application
The subscriber is free to implement any wanted passive or active behaviour:
Passive Behaviour: The subscriber will receive an event for each modification externally applied to the YANG model.
Active Behaviour: At any point in time the subscriber can proactively change its own YANG model.
Runtime Configuration
Customizing TLS and SSH accesses
The distributed docker image comes with a sample configuration for TLS and SSH, that can be found at /config/tls and /home/netconf/.ssh directories respectively. The user can replace one or both configurations by mounting a custom directory under the respective TLS or SSH mounting point.
Python Virtual Environment Support
Python programs usually use additional packages not included in the standard Python distribution, like the requests package, for example. We support this scenario by creating isolated Python environments for each custom-provided module whenever a requirements.txt file is present in the module directory.
Example Module
The directory examples/mynetconf contains an example YANG model and its subscriber along with a Docker Compose configuration file to launch a basic simulator.