Deployment Example/Instructions/Cookbook

[dankuednet]

Does anyone have detailed instructions how to deploy avd in a Windows environment with VS Code and Docker? I'm trying to spin up a dev container for a test lab but I'm obviously missing something.

[ankudinov]

@dankuednet generally speaking the VS Code docs are the primary reference for that: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/devcontainers/containers#_getting-started

TLDR;

wsl --install
# windows will ask to restart the PC =)

# Install VSCode if not yet installed
# Install remote development extension on VSCode - ms-vscode-remote.vscode-remote-extensionpack

# on the first run VSCode will suggest to install Docker in WSL - accept

# following devcontainer spec should work for Docker on Ubuntu WSL
# however on certain machines additional parametes can be required

{
  "image": "ghcr.io/aristanetworks/avd/universal:python3.11-avd-v5.2.2",
  "remoteUser": "avd"
}

This was tested multiple times and works well usually, however I've seen this failing on some Windows machines. Windows machines are VERY different.
I'm currently working on a simple way to get it working with Podman Desktop as a standard supporting tool, however this is far from being finished.

I also have to mention that AVD container images are still in preview. And while we are planning to move them into prod phase soon, there is a lot of work ahead and Windows support is not the first priority.

[dankuednet]

It now seems to be working. I was missing the ms-vscode-remote.vscode-remote-extensionpack.

I now only need to know how to play an example like l2ls-fabric. The project structure and directories seems slightly different than what is shown in the youtube demos. What files/folders should I copy and more importantly where should I copy them to?

I already ran the "ansible-playbook arista.avd.install_example".
I again must be missing a simple step.

[ankudinov]

If you have an empty workspace - you can use cp -r /home/avd/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/arista/avd/examples/l2ls-fabric/* .. This will simply unpack l2ls example into your workspace. Here is one-liner (l3ls) that you can use to test examples quickly:

podman run --rm -it -w /home/avd ghcr.io/aristanetworks/avd/universal:python3.11-avd-v5.2.2 zsh -c "cp -r /home/avd/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/arista/avd/examples/single-dc-l3ls/* .; ansible-playbook build.yml; cat intended/configs/dc1-leaf1a.cfg; zsh"

Obviously replace Podman with Docker if required and anything else that doesn't fit. You can certainly use ansible-playbook arista.avd.install_example to unpack all examples. However it's slower and in my opinion cp is better for majority of use cases.

Could you please share the link to the youtube demos? I'll check what is presented there and we may consider recording an alternative with container workflow.