netlab release 1.5.2 brings another bunch of cool features, including:

• Aruba AOS-CX Support by Stefano Sasso
• External network management tools that you can start together with your lab
• Tunnel interfaces
• Reusable topology components

I’ll cover these features in separate blog posts; today I wanted to highlight a few minor additions:

• Add --force flag to netlab down command. It was impossible to clean up the lab directory if you managed to create a lab topology that upset the orchestration tool¹. The new --force flag allows you to force a directory cleanup with netlab down --cleanup --force.

• netlab can create configuration files for lab containers (primarily Linux hosts). These files are created before the lab is started and are executed within netlab, making it impossible to use anything but the standard Jinja2 filters. Release 1.5.2 allows you to use some Ansible filters when creating container configuration files

• The find custom configuration template logic was extended to include node name in the search list. This allows you to deploy per-node custom configuration templates, for example to include saved device configurations when starting a new lab.

• netlab up and netlab down commands support dry run mode (--dry-run option) that prints the commands that would be executed instead of executing them – that might come handy when you’re trying to troubleshoot bizarre failures.

Upgrading

To get more details and learn about additional features included in release 1.5.2, read the release notes. To upgrade, execute pip3 install --upgrade networklab.

New to netlab? Start with the Getting Started document and the installation guide.