EDA Workshop

Nokia Event-Driven Automation (EDA) is a next-generation data center network automation platform designed to ensure reliable network operations, simplify the entire network management lifecycle, and adapt quickly to evolving demands—while achieving human error zero. EDA is a modern, Kubernetes-based platform that simplifies the data center network operations across all stages—from Day 0 design and Day 1 deployment to Day 2+ operations. It abstracts the complexity of multivendor environments, enabling real-time provisioning, live streaming telemetry, and integration with on-prem cloud platforms.

Please contact Mohammad Zaman, Amit Kumar, Frank Cordova if you have any questions.

Join the community on discord

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Topologies
3. Fabric
4. Queries
5. ChatOps
6. Custom Dashboard
7. Challenge Yourself

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Overview

The workshop will primarily focus on getting familiar with the key concepts in EDA. As such, we are not going to spend a lot of time diving deep into the inner workings of EDA. We hope that participating in this workshop will whet your appetite. Since EDA is free (as in 🍺) to try, you can easily spin up your own installation and get as wild as you want!

When you are ready to spin up your own playground... Try EDA!

We will be building our fabric and overlay on top of the base topology that is instantiated when you start the Try EDA! Playground, but you are encouraged to get as creative as your computer resources will allow 💻

Topologies

• TopoNodes
• TopoLinks
• Topologies
• Further Reading docs.eda.dev and documentation.nokia.com

🔑 Key Takeaway: The playground operates using the same mechanism that powers digital twin capabilities, enabling you to test and validate any changes before applying them to the physical network.

The topology is the foundation of the layers of abstraction EDA uses to implement the declared intent of the engineer. It is made up of a number of nodes, interfaces and links.

The default topology in the playground (and the one we are using) is depicted in this image:

In EDA, the topology is a tree made up of nodes and links. Each tier of the tree can contain multiple resources and relationships between tiers is drawn based on the links 🌲

The playground topology when depicted in this abstracted way looks like this:

You may have noticed that the abstraction image refers to the nodes as TopoNodes and the links as TopoLinks. In EDA, a leaf or spine switch would be a TopoNode and the circuit between the leaf and spine would be a TopoLink.

🚀 Activity

Based on the image above:

1. This drop-down allows you to select the Namespace, this topology is in the eda Namespace
2. The topology is found in the Main screen
3. Topologies are where we can find defined topologies (note that you will need to double-click the topology to open the visualization)
4. The i opens the Information screen.
5. Click leaf1 to be able to see all of the information about the node, take a moment to look at all of the available information about this node.

Next, look through the options on the left side of the screen to find Nodes in the Targets subsection.

1. You will see a list of the three nodes in our topology [ spine, leaf1, leaf2 ]
2. Click on the three vertical dots on the far right-hand side of one of the nodes.
3. Click Node Configuration to see the full configuration of the node as it is currently deployed. You will be able to come back to look at this after other steps to be able to see how the configuration changes as you build out the fabric. Close this view when you are done.
4. Now click Configuration View from the three vertical dots. This is where the various options were set for this node.
5. Click Edit in the bottom right corner of the Configuration View and notice the yaml pane - you can make changes to the yaml or the gui in this screen and they will update eachother. Change operatingSystem to sros and notice that the other side also changes. Click cancel in the lower left corner or the X in the upper right when you are done here, and then click OK.

The Links and Interfaces sections are further down the left side in the Topology section. Spend some time to see what you can find in these.

🏆 Going Deeper

Topologies can be built manually, but it is far more common to generate the topology files using one of the methods described in the docs.eda.dev

To challenge yourself, draw your topology on a napkin and then use the tools to generate your topology in EDA to match your drawing.

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Fabric

• Building Blocks
• Manual Configuration
• Template Deployment
• Further Reading docs.eda.dev

🔑 Key Takeaway: The declarative, intent-based approach provided by EDA allows an engineer to validate and implement an entire fabric in less time than it takes an engineer to log into a single switch.

The Fabric app was designed to make deployment of data center fabrics of all sizes much faster and without errors. It is able to automate the deployment of the fabric components such as IP addresses, VLANs and both the underlay and overlay network protocols.

The Fabric app supports highly flexible deployment models, enabling you to tailor the configuration of your data center fabric to suit different architectural needs. The data center can be a single fabric (as we will demonstrate in our playground), or it could be divided up into any number of fabrics which can then be interconnected to form a cohesive managed set of fabrics.

Each element in the topology is able to be assigned any number of labels. The labels are able to be used to filter and select elements to determine how to apply configurations to the element based on their role in the network.

Example Label Selectors:

• Leaf Node Selector: eda.nokia.com/role=leaf
• Spine Node Selector: eda.nokia.com/role=spine
• Fabric Selector: eda.network.com/pod=pod1

System/Loopback Interfaces

• IPv4 Assignment: IPv4 addresses must be assigned to the primary loopback interface (system or loopback) of each node.
• IPv6 Assignment: Optionally, IPv6 addresses can also be configured on these interfaces.

TopoLink Interfaces:

• The Fabric app requires the configuration of either IPv4, IPv6 addresses or the use of IPv6 unnumbered on the interfaces selected by the TopoLink label selector under the InterSwitchLinks property, assuring that all connections with the network are addressed.

IP Allocation Pools:

• IP addresses can be automatically assigned from the specified IP Address allocation pools. Separate pools are commonly used for system interfaces and ISL (inter-switch link) interfaces.

Underlay Protocol:

• The Fabric app currently supports eBGP underlay. ISL (inter-switch links) and ASNs will be configured using defined IP/ASN allocation pools.

Routing Policies:

• If not defined manually, the Fabric app will automatically generate the required RoutingPolicies

Overlay Protocol:

• eBGP: if eBGP is selected, the existing underlay sessions will be reused but with the added address-families to support the overlay.
• iBGP: if iBGP is selected, Autonomous System for the iBGP session must be configured. Additionally, Route Reflector, RR IP Addresses, RR Client Nodes and RR Nodes must be configured.

🚀 Activity

Based on the image above:

1. Click on Fabrics
2. Click on Create

This will open the Fabric Edit window.

Using the image above as a reference:

1. Instead of scrolling to find where to enter configurations, you can type the name of the element and it will take you right there.
2. This is an example of having to manually type a specific entry. Be sure to type these carefully as they are free-form.

Filling out the Fabric UI form:

1. Starting at the top, type workshop-fabric in the Name field
2. In the Labels drop-down, choose Add at the top
3. In the Add pop-up, type eda.nokia.com/pod for the Key and pod1 for the Value and click the Add button
4. In the Specification section, use the drop-down menu to select systemipv4-pool for the IPv4 Pool - System IP option
5. Do the same for IPv6 Pool - System IP but select systemipv6-pool instead
6. In the Specification | Leafs section, click Add a Label Selector and enter eda.nokia.com/role=leaf (as shown in the image above)
7. In the Specification | Spines section, click Add a Label Selector and enter eda.nokia.com/role=spine
8. In the Specification | InterSwitchLinks section, use the drop-down menu to select ipv4-pool for the IPv4 Pool - InterSwitch Link IP option
9. Do the same for IPv6 Pool - InterSwitch Link IP but select ipv6-pool instead
10. Click Add a Label Selector for the Link Selector option and enter eda.nokia.com/role=interSwitch
11. In the Specification | Underlay Protocol section, use the drop-down to select EBGP in the Protocol option
12. Use the drop-down to select asn-pool in the Autonomous System Pool option
13. In the Specification | Overlay Protocol section, use the drop-down to select IBGP in the Protocol option
14. In the Specification | Overlay Protocol | BGP section, type 65500 in the Autonomous System option
15. Type 1.1.1.1 in the Cluster ID option
16. Click Add a Label Selector in the Route Reflector Node Selector and enter eda.nokia.com/role=spine
17. Click Add a Label Selector in the Route Reflector Client Node Selector and enter eda.nokia.com/role=leaf
18. Click the Add To Transaction button in the lower right corner.

Validating the Fabric configuration:

1. Click on the Transaction basket in the upper right corner (it will be blue with a transaction in it)
2. Click on Dry Run
3. Click on Diffs
4. On the left side, all of the configuration changes can be viewed for each of the elements - take some time to look through the configurations that have been generated from this basic intent.
5. Once you are properly amazed, click Cancel
6. Click the X at the bottom of the Transactions window to discard the transaction.

Faster! Better!

1. Open the underlay_fabric.yaml file.
2. Copy the contents of the file (ctrl-a followed by ctrl-c) or (command-a followed by command-c) on mac
3. Click Create in the Fabrics window again.
4. Instead of wasting time filling out everything manually, we will just paste the file into the YAML window
   • Click into the YAML window, and do ctrl-a/command-a (depending on your OS) hit backspace/delete
   • Now that we have a blank window, do ctrl-v/command-v (depending on your OS) to paste the file contents into the window.
5. Notice how all of the fields in the form became populated?
6. Now we can click Add to Transaction immediately
7. In the Transaction Basket, click Dry Run again, followed by Diffs and notice that we have all the same configurations from before, but we did it in only a few seconds this time.
8. Click Commit to push the configurations to the network.

🏆 Going Deeper

We used a very basic set of intents to create this fabric. Although it is fully viable, in most cases you will be configuring your allocation pools and fabrics to match your own network.

Read through the fabric docs at docs.eda.dev and create some of your own pools and labels and apply them to a more customized fabric configuration.

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Queries

• EQL
• Natural Language
• edactl
• e9s
• Further Reading docs.eda.dev and documentation.nokia.com

🔑 Key Takeaway: The EQL enables real-time querying and parsing of the entire state of managed devices, supplying data for visualization and streaming to external applications. This gives engineers a unified view of the managed network, treating it as a single cohesive resource.

EDA supports queries using a syntax that is collectively referred to as the EDA Query Language, or EQL.

🚀 Activity

Based on the above image:

1. The Queries can be found in the Tools subsection.
2. The drop-down menu allows you to select either EQL Query or Natural Language

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Natural Language Queries

Prerequisite: API key configured in the .spec.llm context of your EngineConfig. Refer to the install guide for more details.

1. Start by selecting Natural Language from the Query Builder drop-down menu.
2. In the query text box, type show me all ethernet-1/1 interfaces and click the Query button.
3. You will see the details for ethernet-1/1 on each of the nodes appear in the results window.
4. Notice that the EQL representation of the query you just performed (.namespace.node.srl.interface where (name = "ethernet-1/1")) is displayed directly below the query text box
5. Now, add on leaf1 to the end of your query string so that it says show me all ethernet-1/1 on leaf1 and click the Query button
6. Notice that the EQL representation is updated and now you only see the leaf1 node in the results window.

EQL Queries

1. Start by selecting EQL Query from the Query Builder drop-down menu.
2. In the query text box, type .namespace. and notice that a contextual list of options appears below.
3. Choose .namespace.node.srl.network-instance.interface and click the Query button.
4. In the results window, you will see every interface on every node in every network-instance in the topology.
5. Filter your results by adding where (.namespace.node.name = "leaf1") to the end of the query string so that it now shows .namespace.node.srl.network-instance.interface where ( .namespace.node.name = "leaf1") and click the Query button
6. In the results window, you only see leaf1 interfaces now.

Thinking of the entire topology as a single resource that can be queried in real-time should be exciting. Troubleshooting just became that much easier and faster.

7. In the query text box, enter .namespace.node.srl.interface.traffic-rate fields [sum(in-bps) as "In", sum(out-bps) as "Out"] and click the Query button.

This shows you a real-time aggregate traffic counter on the entire network! This exemplifies the value of using streaming telemetry!

🏆 Going Deeper

EQL is extremely flexible and can do far more than what we have tried so far. Take a look at the documentation.nokia.com for more details.

In addition to the EDA GUI access, there are other text-based methods available for performing queries: e9s and edactl

Take some time to give those two tools a try. Try creating some more advanced and interesting queries of your own.

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ChatOps

• App Store
• Notifier
• Further Reading docs.eda.com

🔑 Key Takeaway: Extending the functionality of EDA is just a click away with the App Store. Integrating ChatOps into your operations workflow is just that simple.

Many teams rely on messaging applications such as discord or slack for critical communications and notifications.

The Notifier app, available in the App Store allows for easy integration.

🚀 Activity

Based on the image above:

1. The App Store is located in the System Administration view
2. The App Store is labeled as Store in the App Management subsection
3. The Notifier app is an Integrations category
4. The Notifier app provides the functionality for ChatOps integration

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App Install

1. Simply click the Install 2.0 button to install the app

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Notifier Configuration

1. The Notifier app now shows up in the Main view
2. Click on Provider to enter the Provider window
3. Click the Create button in the upper right
4. Copy and paste this Provider YAML into the YAML box just as before in the fabric creation section
5. Click the Add To Transaction button
6. Click the Notifier button on the left side to enter the Notifier window
7. Click the Create button in the upper right
8. Copy and paste this Notifier YAML into the YAML box just as before
9. Click the Add To Transaction button
10. Click the Transaction Basket and click Commit

To see the ChatOps integration, join the EDA Workshop Discord

🏆 Going Deeper

Try to trigger some changes in EDA to see the notifications show up in the discord server.

Our Notifier is currently set to send every notification. Refer to the docs.eda.dev to see how to set up filters to deliver only specific notifications.

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Custom Dashboard

• Revision Control (Restore/Revert)
• Deviations & Remediation
• EQL
• Further Reading documentation.nokia.com

🔑 Key Takeaway: Creating custom dashboards in EDA allows you to tailor the data to display information important to your organization.

The ability to create custom dashboards allows an engineer to see a visual representation of significant information in just a glance.

Each of the dashlets are described in detail in the documentation.nokia.com

🏆 Going Deeper

Create your own custom dashboard by following the steps laid out in the documentation.nokia.com

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