Two interesting container images were released in June/July 2021:

• Michael Kashin managed to package Cumulus VX into a container image (more details).
• Roman Dodin managed to persuade Nokia to release SR Linux as a container.

Both images can be downloaded with no strings attached (two major wins for the good guys) and are supported with the latest release of netsim-tools:

• Cumulus VX container is fully supported. You can run it in Docker mode or micro-VM mode (needed for MLAG testing) and configure it using the usual netlab initial or netlab config commands.
• Nokia SR Linux can be used as a device type in network topology, but cannot be configured with netlab CLI (netlab connect works). Someone would need to develop Ansible playbooks and configuration templates for SR Linux, and I’m feeling too old to tackle yet-another CLI. Junos is bad enough ;)

Other goodies you’ll find in release 0.8.1:

• Now that we have a full-blown no-strings-attached container image (Cumulus VX), I could write automated test of your containerlab deployment. Execute netlab test clab, sit back and enjoy the show.
• I added the ability to set virtualization provider, device type, and individual topology attributes from the command line. With this functionality you could create container-based or VM-based lab using the same topology file, or change parameters like OSPF area number on-the-fly.