Ostinato for Containerlab

How to install Ostinato for ContainerLab

docker load -i docker-ostinato-lab-{tag}.tgz

Use docker images to verify ostinato-lab/ostinato is listed -

$ docker images
REPOSITORY                    TAG        IMAGE ID       CREATED        SIZE
ostinato-lab/ostinato         v2.0.0-0   914a960b8124   19 hours ago   751MB
<none>                        <none>     2a0175a90aba   19 hours ago   754MB
<none>                        <none>     edc5c451a16f   44 hours ago   751MB
<none>                        <none>     908a68fb0900   47 hours ago   754MB
ubuntu                        22.04      6b7dfa7e8fdb   3 weeks ago    77.8MB
ghcr.io/nokia/srlinux         latest     db41df9a3ad0   4 weeks ago    2.8GB
$

How to use Ostinato for ContainerLab

Add a topology node definition in .clab.yml as follows -

. . .
topology:
  nodes:
    ost:
      kind: linux
      image: ostinato-lab/ostinato:{tag}
      ports:
        - 5900:5900/tcp
        - 7878:7878/tcp
. . .

Replace {tag} above with the tag shown in the output of docker images.

For links use ethernet interface names of the form eth1, eth2 and so on.

💡 You don’t need multiple Ostinato nodes in a lab. You can connect links from a single Ostinato node to all the other nodes in a lab.

VNC access

Once the lab is deployed, connect a VNC client to <host-ip>:5900 - this will bring up the Ostinato GUI (eth0 will not be shown in the GUI since it is the mgmt interface).

If you have to use multiple Ostinato nodes in a lab (not typically required as mentioned above), change the host VNC port for the additional nodes while keeping the container port always at 5900.

. . .
topology:
  nodes:
    ost1:
      kind: linux
      image: ostinato-lab/ostinato:{tag}
      ports:
        - 5900:5900/tcp
        - 7878:7878/tcp
    ost2:
      kind: linux
      image: ostinato-lab/ostinato:{tag}
      ports:
        - 5901:5900/tcp
        - 7878:7878/tcp
. . .

The ost2 node has only the VNC host port changed to 5901. To access the second node use <host-ip>:5901 in your VNC client.

Screenshot

Click to enlarge

Native GUI access

If you have a multi-node or hybrid topology (or if you find VNC clumsy), you can use a native Ostinato GUI for your OS to connect to the ostinato node in containerlab.

The native Ostinato GUI controller is NOT included with this package and needs to be purchased separately.