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Getting Started

Getting Started

This section shows how to use ANTA with basic configuration. All examples are based on Arista Test Drive (ATD) topology you can access by reaching out to your prefered SE.

Installation

The easiest way to intall ANTA package is to run Python (>=3.8) and its pip package to install:

pip install anta

For more details about how to install package, please see the requirements and intallation section.

Configure Arista EOS devices

For ANTA to be able to connect to your target devices, you need to configure your management interface

vrf instance MGMT
!
interface Management0
   description oob_management
   vrf MGMT
   ip address 192.168.0.10/24
!

Then, configure access to eAPI:

!
management api http-commands
   protocol https port 443
   no shutdown
   vrf MGMT
      no shutdown
   !
!

Create your inventory

ANTA uses an inventory to list the target devices for the tests. You can create a file manually with this format:

anta_inventory:
  hosts:
  - host: 192.168.0.10
    name: spine01
    tags: ['fabric', 'spine']
  - host: 192.168.0.11
    name: spine02
    tags: ['fabric', 'spine']
  - host: 192.168.0.12
    name: leaf01
    tags: ['fabric', 'leaf']
  - host: 192.168.0.13
    name: leaf02
    tags: ['fabric', 'leaf']
  - host: 192.168.0.14
    name: leaf03
    tags: ['fabric', 'leaf']
  - host: 192.168.0.15
    name: leaf04
    tags: ['fabric', 'leaf']

You can read more details about how to build your inventory here

Test Catalog

To test your network, ANTA relies on a test catalog to list all the tests to run against your inventory. A test catalog references python functions into a yaml file.

The structure to follow is like:

<anta_tests_submodule>:
  - <anta_tests_submodule function name>:
      <test function option>:
        <test function option value>

You can read more details about how to build your catalog here

Here is an example for basic tests:

# Load anta.tests.software
anta.tests.software:
  - VerifyEOSVersion: # Verifies the device is running one of the allowed EOS version.
      versions: # List of allowed EOS versions.
        - 4.25.4M
        - 4.26.1F
        - '4.28.3M-28837868.4283M (engineering build)'
  - VerifyTerminAttrVersion:
      versions:
        - v1.22.1

anta.tests.system:
  - VerifyUptime: # Verifies the device uptime is higher than a value.
      minimum: 1
  - VerifyNTP:
  - VerifySyslog:

anta.tests.mlag:
  - VerifyMlagStatus:
  - VerifyMlagInterfaces:
  - VerifyMlagConfigSanity:

anta.tests.configuration:
  - VerifyZeroTouch: # Verifies ZeroTouch is disabled.
  - VerifyRunningConfigDiffs:

Test your network

ANTA comes with a generic CLI entrypoint to run tests in your network. It requires an inventory file as well as a test catalog.

This entrypoint has multiple options to manage test coverage and reporting.

# Generic ANTA options
$ anta
Usage: anta [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Arista Network Test Automation (ANTA) CLI

Options:
  --version                       Show the version and exit.
  --username TEXT                 Username to connect to EOS  [env var:
                                  ANTA_USERNAME; required]
  --password TEXT                 Password to connect to EOS that must be
                                  provided. It can be prompted using '--
                                  prompt' option.  [env var: ANTA_PASSWORD]
  --enable-password TEXT          Password to access EOS Privileged EXEC mode.
                                  It can be prompted using '--prompt' option.
                                  Requires '--enable' option.  [env var:
                                  ANTA_ENABLE_PASSWORD]
  --enable                        Some commands may require EOS Privileged
                                  EXEC mode. This option tries to access this
                                  mode before sending a command to the device.
                                  [env var: ANTA_ENABLE]
  -P, --prompt                    Prompt for passwords if they are not
                                  provided.
  --timeout INTEGER               Global connection timeout  [env var:
                                  ANTA_TIMEOUT; default: 30]
  --insecure                      Disable SSH Host Key validation  [env var:
                                  ANTA_INSECURE]
  -i, --inventory FILE            Path to the inventory YAML file  [env var:
                                  ANTA_INVENTORY; required]
  --log-file FILE                 Send the logs to a file. If logging level is
                                  DEBUG, only INFO or higher will be sent to
                                  stdout.  [env var: ANTA_LOG_FILE]
  --log-level, --log [CRITICAL|ERROR|WARNING|INFO|DEBUG]
                                  ANTA logging level  [env var:
                                  ANTA_LOG_LEVEL; default: INFO]
  --ignore-status                 Always exit with success  [env var:
                                  ANTA_IGNORE_STATUS]
  --ignore-error                  Only report failures and not errors  [env
                                  var: ANTA_IGNORE_ERROR]
  --help                          Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  debug  Debug commands for building ANTA
  exec   Execute commands to inventory devices
  get    Get data from/to ANTA
  nrfu   Run NRFU against inventory devices
# NRFU part of ANTA
$ anta nrfu --help
Usage: anta nrfu [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Run NRFU against inventory devices

Options:
  -c, --catalog FILE  Path to the tests catalog YAML file  [env var:
                      ANTA_NRFU_CATALOG; required]
  --help              Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  json        ANTA command to check network state with JSON result
  table       ANTA command to check network states with table result
  text        ANTA command to check network states with text result
  tpl-report  ANTA command to check network state with templated report

To run the NRFU, you need to select an output format amongst [“json”, “table”, “text”, “tpl-report”]. For a first usage, table is recommended. By default all test results for all devices are rendered but it can be changed to a report per test case or per host

Default report using table
anta \
    --username tom \
    --password arista123 \
    --enable \
    --enable-password t \
    --inventory .personal/inventory_atd.yml \
    nrfu --catalog .personal/tests-bases.yml table --tags leaf


╭────────────────────── Settings ──────────────────────╮
│ Running ANTA tests:                                  │
│ - ANTA Inventory contains 6 devices (AsyncEOSDevice) │
│ - Tests catalog contains 10 tests                    │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
[10:17:24] INFO     Running ANTA tests...                                                                                                           runner.py:75
   Running NRFU Tests...100% ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 40/40  0:00:02  0:00:00

                                                                       All tests results
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Device IP  Test Name                 Test Status  Message(s)        Test description                                                      Test category ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ leaf01     VerifyEOSVersion          success                        Verifies the device is running one of the allowed EOS version.        software      │
│ leaf01     VerifyTerminAttrVersion   success                        Verifies the device is running one of the allowed TerminAttr          software      │
│                                                                     version.                                                                            │
│ leaf01     VerifyUptime              success                        Verifies the device uptime is higher than a value.                    system        │
│ leaf01     VerifyNTP                 success                        Verifies NTP is synchronised.                                         system        │
│ leaf01     VerifySyslog              success                        Verifies the device had no syslog message with a severity of warning  system        │
│                                                                     (or a more severe message) during the last 7 days.                                  │
│ leaf01     VerifyMlagStatus          skipped      MLAG is disabled  This test verifies the health status of the MLAG configuration.       mlag          │
│ leaf01     VerifyMlagInterfaces      skipped      MLAG is disabled  This test verifies there are no inactive or active-partial MLAG       mlag          [...] leaf04     VerifyMlagConfigSanity    skipped      MLAG is disabled  This test verifies there are no MLAG config-sanity inconsistencies.   mlag          │
│ leaf04     VerifyZeroTouch           success                        Verifies ZeroTouch is disabled.                                       configuration │
│ leaf04     VerifyRunningConfigDiffs  success                                                                                              configuration │
└───────────┴──────────────────────────┴─────────────┴──────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┘
Report in text mode
$ anta \
    --username tom \
    --password arista123 \
    --enable \
    --enable-password t \
    --inventory .personal/inventory_atd.yml \
    nrfu --catalog .personal/tests-bases.yml text --tags leaf

╭────────────────────── Settings ──────────────────────╮
│ Running ANTA tests:                                  │
│ - ANTA Inventory contains 6 devices (AsyncEOSDevice) │
│ - Tests catalog contains 10 tests                    │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
[10:20:47] INFO     Running ANTA tests...                                                                                                           runner.py:75
   Running NRFU Tests...100% ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 40/40  0:00:01  0:00:00
leaf01 :: VerifyEOSVersion :: SUCCESS
leaf01 :: VerifyTerminAttrVersion :: SUCCESS
leaf01 :: VerifyUptime :: SUCCESS
leaf01 :: VerifyNTP :: SUCCESS
leaf01 :: VerifySyslog :: SUCCESS
leaf01 :: VerifyMlagStatus :: SKIPPED (MLAG is disabled)
leaf01 :: VerifyMlagInterfaces :: SKIPPED (MLAG is disabled)
leaf01 :: VerifyMlagConfigSanity :: SKIPPED (MLAG is disabled)
[...]
Report in JSON format
$ anta \
    --username tom \
    --password arista123 \
    --enable \
    --enable-password t \
    --inventory .personal/inventory_atd.yml \
    nrfu --catalog .personal/tests-bases.yml json --tags leaf

╭────────────────────── Settings ──────────────────────╮
│ Running ANTA tests:                                  │
│ - ANTA Inventory contains 6 devices (AsyncEOSDevice) │
│ - Tests catalog contains 10 tests                    │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
[10:21:51] INFO     Running ANTA tests...                                                                                                           runner.py:75
   Running NRFU Tests...100% ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 40/40  0:00:02  0:00:00
╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ JSON results of all tests                                                                                                                                    │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
[
  {
    "name": "leaf01",
    "test": "VerifyEOSVersion",
    "categories": [
      "software"
    ],
    "description": "Verifies the device is running one of the allowed EOS version.",
    "result": "success",
    "messages": [],
    "custom_field": "None",
  },
  {
    "name": "leaf01",
    "test": "VerifyTerminAttrVersion",
    "categories": [
      "software"
    ],
    "description": "Verifies the device is running one of the allowed TerminAttr version.",
    "result": "success",
    "messages": [],
    "custom_field": "None",
  },
[...]
]

You can find more information under the usage section of the website


Last update: September 21, 2023