Last December, I wrote a pretty ranty post explaining how Ansible release 12 broke (some?) network device configuration playbooks. The inevitable anonymous troll (why are they always anonymous?) couldn’t resist asking whether I opened an issue on GitHub. I didn’t (more about that later), but when the solution to that rant was “we’re deprecating using templates in src” parameter, I opened an issue arguing why that’s not a good idea.

Tony Mattke published a blog post I wish I’d read 10 years ago. His Oh-Shit Toolkit includes several tools one can use after messing up Git branches or commit history.

Definitely worth reading, even if you’ve been working with Git for ages.

The highlights of netlab release 26.07 include:

• The multiserver plugin by @muddyblack distributes containerlab devices across multiple servers.
• The GRE tunnel plugin supports GRE tunnels on Cisco IOS, FRR, VyOS, and Junos (vSRX and vJunos-router) (most device implementations done by @ssasso and @jbemmel).
• The WireGuard tunnel plugin by @jbemmel supports WireGuard tunnels on FRR.
• The bgp.session plugin and the OSPF module support graceful restart on Arista EOS, BIRD, FortiOS, and FRR (by @jbemmel and @a-v-popov)
• The bgp.policy plugin supports the bgp.role attribute on FRR and BIRD (by @jbemmel).

But wait, there’s more ;)

Jeroen van Bemmel noticed an interesting fact yesterday evening: the netlab GitHub repository has 2000 merged/closed pull requests. I never expected the tiny “let’s learn Python while working around the complexities of Vagrantfile” project to get this far ;))

Thanks a million to everyone who contributed, reported a bug, asked a question, or helped us spread the word. You rock 🤗

Just in case you decide to build a simple Python project over the summer: read scripting good practices in Python by Brett Cannon and tell your AI friend to adhere to them ;)

Ali Bahadır Coşkun continued his EVPN/VXLAN journey. Using the free netlab-powered EVPN/VXLAN labs, he finished the basic EVPN/VXLAN lab (adding EVPN control plane to VXLAN underlay), and then completed the whole VXLAN/IRB/anycast saga.

Want to do something similar? The free EVPN/VXLAN lab exercises include six VXLAN labs, almost a dozen EVPN labs, and a few EVPN designs. I might add a lab or two during the summer break.

Daniel Blažek couldn’t resist testing Arista EOS centralized anycast gateway functionality (on top of IPv6 underlay to make it even more fun) and published working device configurations in a GitHub repo.

His repository includes a containerlab topology definition, so you can start the lab directly from the repository.

Cisco DevNet channel has published an hour-long Getting Started with netlab interview with Suresh Vina, resulting in netlab.tools documentation having more weekly visits than ipspace.net blog for the first time. Thanks a million ;))

If you’re new to netlab, I hope you’ll enjoy the video. If you have any follow-up questions, don’t hesitate to start a discussion.

I can confirm that an old saying is true: the older you are, the faster years pass. Can’t believe it’s time for another summer break. I hope you’ll manage to get away from work, turn off the Internet, and enjoy a few days in your favorite spot with your loved ones!

I also promise I won’t be annoying you with boring stuff like EVPN next hops or pointers to AI myth-busters (I have to admit it: I was cleaning my Inbox this week). However, I probably won’t be able to resist publishing a few lightweight netlab-related blog posts, or links to interesting content.

The Appearing Productive in The Workplace article I stumbled upon is yet another masterful description of how AI slop, used by Expert Beginners, wastes everyone’s time and energy. Try to have fun reading it, even though it may be way too close to the mark.