# Device installation

Installing is the process of loading device information into UniConfig database. This information is saved in PostgreSQL database and used whenever transaction occurs. When the transaction is finished the connection to device is closed again, until next transaction.

These are the steps of installation process:

1. creation of UniConfig transaction
2. creation of mountpoint - connection to device
3. loading configuration and metadata from mountpoint
4. closing mountpoint and connection to device
5. storing synced configuration and metadata to database
6. closing UniConfig transaction

You can specify if you would like to install node on the UniConfig layer. Default value is 'true':

uniconfig-config:install-uniconfig-node-enabled

Only 1 node with the same node-id can be installed on UniConfig layer.

It is synchronous: it succeeds only after node is successfully installed it fails in other cases – max-connection-attempts is automatically set to value '1', if different value is not provided in RPC input, database or config file.

Following sections provide deeper explanation of parameters needed for installation, along with example install requests.

All install parameters (CLI/NETCONF) are set in database when Uniconfig is initializing. Values of these parameters are equal to specific yang model default values. These parameters are used when they are missing in RPC request.

Priority of using install parameters :

1. Parameter set in install RPC request
2. Parameter set in database
3. Default parameter from yang model

Priority of initial writing default parameters into database:

1. Database already contains default parameters
2. User defines default parameters into config file
3. Default values from yang schema file will be saved

Default parameters can be managed (put/read/delete) by user using RESTCONF/Uniconfig-shell.

Definition of default parameters can be also done using config file default-parameters.json. It is placed in config subdirectory together with lighty-uniconfig-config.json.

{
    "netconf-default-parameters" : {
        "session-timers" : {
            "initial-connection-timeout": 20,
            "request-transaction-timeout": 60,
            "between-attempts-timeout" : 2,
            "max-connection-attempts": 1,
            "max-reconnection-attempts": 0,
            "keepalive-delay": 120,
            "reconnenction-attempts-multiplier": 1.5,
            "confirm-commit-timeout" : 600
        },
        "flags": {
            "enabled-notifications" : true,
            "enabled-strict-parsing" : true,
            "streaming-session" : false,
            "reconnect-on-changed-schema" : false
        },
        "other-parameters" : {
            "concurrent-rpc-limit" : 0,
            "dry-run-journal-size" : 0,
            "custom-connector-factory" : "default",
            "edit-config-test-option" : "test-then-set"
        }
    },
    "cli-default-parameters" : {
        "max-connection-attempts": 1,
        "max-reconnection-attempts": 0,
        "keepalive-delay" : 60,
        "keepalive-timeout": 60,
        "keepalive-initial-delay": 120,
        "journal-size" : 0,
        "dry-run-journal-size" : 0,
        "journal-level" : "command-only",
        "parsing-engine" : "tree-parser"
    }
}

RPC request - CLI default parameters:

curl --location --request PUT 'http://localhost:8181/rests/data/cli-topology:cli-default-parameters' \
--header 'Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46YWRtaW4=' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
    "cli-topology:cli-default-parameters" : {
        "cli-topology:max-connection-attempts": 3,
        "cli-topology:max-reconnection-attempts": 3,
        "cli-topology:keepalive-delay" : 60,
        "cli-topology:keepalive-timeout": 60,
        "cli-topology:keepalive-initial-timeout": 120,
        "cli-topology:journal-size" : 0,
        "cli-topology:dry-run-journal-size" : 0,
        "cli-topology:journal-level" : "command-only",
        "cli-topology:parsing-engine" : "tree-parser"
    }
}'

RPC request - NETCONF default parameters:

curl --location --request PUT 'http://localhost:8181/rests/data/netconf-node-topology:netconf-default-parameters' \
--header 'Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46YWRtaW4=' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
    "netconf-node-topology:netconf-default-parameters" : {
        "session-timers" : {
            "initial-connection-timeout": 20,
            "request-transaction-timeout": 60,
            "between-attempts-timeout" : 2,
            "max-connection-attempts": 1,
            "max-reconnection-attempts": 0,
            "keepalive-delay": 120,
            "reconnenction-attempts-multiplier": 1.5,
            "confirm-commit-timeout" : 600
        },
        "flags": {
            "enabled-notifications" : true,
            "enabled-strict-parsing" : true,
            "streaming-session" : false,
            "reconnect-on-changed-schema" : false
        },
        "other-parameters" : {
            "concurrent-rpc-limit" : 0,
            "dry-run-journal-size" : 0,
            "custom-connector-factory" : "default",
            "edit-config-test-option" : "test-then-set"
        }
    }
}'

List of basic connection parameters that are used for identification of remote device. All of these parameters are mandatory.

• node-id - Name of node that represents device in the topology.
• cli-topology:host - IP address or domain-name of target device that runs SSH or Telnet server.
• cli-topology:port - TCP port on which the SSH or Telnet server on remote device is listening to incoming connections. Standard SSH port is '22', standard Telnet port is '23'.
• cli-topology:transport-type - Application protocol used for communication with device - supported options are 'ssh' and 'telnet'.
• cli-topology:device-type - Device type that is used for selection of translation units that maps device configuration to OpenConfig models. Supported devices can be found
• cli-topology:device-version - Version of device. Use a specific version or * for a generic one. * enables only basic read and write management without the support of OpenConfig models. Here.
• cli-topology:username - Username for accessing of CLI management line.
• cli-topology:password - Password assigned to username.
• uniconfig-config:install-uniconfig-node-enabled - Whether node should be installed to UniConfig and unified layers. By default, this flag is set to 'true'.

List of authentication parameters used for identification of remote user utilized for configuration of the device. Username and password parameters are mandatory.

• cli-topology:username - Username for accessing of CLI management line.
• cli-topology:password - Password assigned to username.

List of parameters that can be used for adjusting of reconnection strategy. None of these parameters is mandatory - if they are not set, default values are set. There are two exclusive groups of parameters based on selected reconnection strategy - you can define only parameters from single group. By default, keepalive strategy is used.

Following parameters adjust maintaining of CLI session state. None of these parameters are mandatory (default values will be used).

• cli-topology:max-connection-attempts - Maximum number of initial connection attempts (default value: 1). If there are unstable devices in the network it might be useful to provide max-connection-attempts higher than the default value. It would try to connect n times before throwing an ssh connection exception.
• cli-topology:max-reconnection-attempts - Maximum number of reconnection attempts (default value: 1). max-reconnection-attempts is not that necessary to set. Uniconfig does not keep idle sessions open longer than it is necessary.

1. Keepalive reconnection strategy

• cli-topology:keepalive-delay - Delay between sending of keepalive messages over CLI session. The value should not be set higher than the execution of the longest operation. Default value: 60 seconds.
• cli-topology:keepalive-timeout - This parameter defines how much time the CLI layer should wait for a response to keepalive message before the session is closed. Default value: 60 seconds.
• cli-topology:keepalive-initial-delay - This parameter defines how much time CLI layer waits for establishment of new CLI session before the first reconnection attempt is launched. Default value: 120 seconds.

The keepalive parameters have two main functions:

• keep the idle session open
• timeout commands which would block the session forever

For this example let us assume that we are dealing with a prod-like device, which would mean that some devices might have a large config. We would set these parameters:

    max-connection-attempts=3
    max-reconnection-attempts=3
    keepalive-delay=120
    keepalive-timeout=120

Connection attempts would give us more flexibility if we work with unstable devices. It would try to ssh 3 times instead of 1 (default value). We should also keep in mind that the process of connecting to a device would take longer because of extra ssh attempts.

Keepalive commands can be set less than time of the installation, because keepalive commands can fit in between of the installation process. An important thing to keep in mind is to set sum of keepalive-delay and keepalive-timeout parameters higher than time of execution of the configuration show command. Otherwise, it could time out during writing out of the configuration to the console. For each type of device it is a different command (configuration show brief for Ciena devices, show run for Cisco devices, etc.). Assumption is that it should not take more than 240 seconds (sum of keepalive params) to show the whole configuration. This can be appropriately adjusted to our circumstances.

2. Lazy reconnection strategy

• command-timeout - Maximal time (in seconds) for command execution. If a command cannot be executed on a device in this time, the execution is considered a failure. Default value: 60 seconds.
• connection-establish-timeout - Maximal time (in seconds) for connection establishment. If a connection attempt fails in this time, the attempt is considered a failure. Default value: 60 seconds.
• connection-lazy-timeout - Maximal time (in seconds) for connection to keep alive. If no activity was detected in the session and the timeout has been reached, connection will be stopped. Default value: 60 seconds.

The following parameters relate with tracing of executed commands. It is not required to set these parameters.

• cli-topology:journal-size - Size of the cli mount-point journal. Journal keeps track of executed commands and makes them available for users/apps for debugging purposes. Value 0 disables journaling (it is default value).
• cli-topology:dry-run-journal-size - Creates dry-run mount-point and defines number of commands in command history for dry-run mount-point. Value 0 disables dry-run functionality (it is default value).
• cli-topology:journal-level - Sets how much information should be stored in the journal. Option 'command-only' stores only the actual commands executed on device. Option 'extended' records additional information such as: transaction life-cycle, which handlers were invoked etc.

Parsing strategies are used for:

• Recognizing of structure in cached device configuration that is represented in textual format.
• Extraction of target sections from structured format of device configuration.

Parsing engine can be configured on creation of mountpoint by specification of parsing-engine leaf value. Currently, there are three supported CLI parsing strategies: tree-parser (default strategy), batch-parser and one-line-parser.

• It is set as default parsing engine in case you choose to not use 'parsing-engine' parameter.
• Running-configuration is mapped into the tree structure before the first command lookup is executed from translation unit. Afterwards, this tree can be reused in the same transaction for faster lookup process (for example, one 'sync-from-network' task is executed in one transaction).
• Tree-parser is faster than batch-parser in most cases because device configuration must be traversed only once and searching for target section in parsed tree structure has only logarithmic time complexity. The longer the device configuration is, the better performance improvement is achieved using this parsing strategy.
• Both batch-parser and tree-parser should be capable to parse the same device configurations (in other words, tree-parser doesn't have any functional restrictions in comparison to batch-parser).

• Running-configuration must be traversed from the beginning each time when new target section is extracted from the configuration (such lookup process is launched from CLI translation units).
• Internally, this parser uses regular expressions to recognize structure of configuration and find target section. From this reason, if configuration is long, this batch-parser becomes ineffective to extract sections that are placed near the end of device configuration.
• Batch-parser should be used only as fallback strategy in the case when tree-parser fails.

• CLI parsing engine that stores configuration in the cache in the form of blocks and then uses grep function for parsing running-configuration

curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:8181/rests/operations/connection-manager:install-node' \
--header 'Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46YWRtaW4=' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
    "input": {
        "node-id": "iosxr",
        "cli": {
            "cli-topology:host": "192.168.1.214",
            "cli-topology:port": "22",
            "cli-topology:transport-type": "ssh",
            "cli-topology:device-type": "ios xr",
            "cli-topology:device-version": "5.3.4",
            "cli-topology:username": "cisco",
            "cli-topology:password": "cisco",
            "cli-topology:journal-size": 150,
            "cli-topology:dry-run-journal-size": 150,
            "cli-topology:parsing-engine": "batch-parser",
            "uniconfig-config:install-uniconfig-node-enabled": false
        }
    }
}'

curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:8181/rests/operations/connection-manager:install-node' \
--header 'Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46YWRtaW4=' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
    "input": {
        "node-id": "junos",
        "cli": {
            "cli-topology:host": "192.168.1.25",
            "cli-topology:port": "22",
            "cli-topology:transport-type": "ssh",
            "cli-topology:device-type": "junos",
            "cli-topology:device-version": "17.3",
            "cli-topology:username": "root",
            "cli-topology:password": "Agiebiz2",
            "cli-topology:journal-size": 150,
            "uniconfig-config:install-uniconfig-node-enabled": false
        }
    }
}'

curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:8181/rests/operations/connection-manager:uninstall-node' \
--header 'Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46YWRtaW4=' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
    "input": {
        "node-id": "junos",
        "connection-type": "cli"
    }
}'

List of basic connection parameters that are used for identification of remote device. Only tcp-only parameter must not be specified in input of the request.

• node-id - Name of node that represents device / mount-point in the topology.
• netconf-node-topology:host - IP address or domain-name of target device that runs NETCONF server.
• netconf-node-topology:port - TCP port on which NETCONF server is listening to incoming connections.
• netconf-node-topology:tcp-only - If it is set to 'true', NETCONF session is created directly on top of TCP connection. Otherwise, 'SSH' is used as carriage protocol. By default, this parameter is set to 'false'.

Parameters used for configuration of the basic authentication method against NETCONF server. These parameters must be specified in the input request.

• network-topology:username - Name of the user that has permission to access device using NETCONF management line.
• network-topology:password - Password to the user in non-encrypted format.

The following parameters adjust timers that are related with maintaining of NETCONF session state. None of these parameters are mandatory (default values will be used).

• netconf-node-topology:initial-connection-timeout - Specifies timeout in seconds after which initial connection to the NETCONF server must be established (default value: 20 s).
• netconf-node-topology:request-transaction-timeout - Timeout for blocking RPC operations within transactions (default value: 60 s).
• netconf-node-topology:max-connection-attempts - Maximum number of connection attempts (default value: 1).
• netconf-node-topology:max-reconnection-attempts - Maximum number of reconnection attempts (default value: 0 - disabled).
• netconf-node-topology:between-attempts-timeout - Initial timeout between reconnection attempts (default value: 2 s).
• netconf-node-topology:reconnenction-attempts-multiplier - Multiplier between subsequent delays of reconnection attempts (default value: 1.5).
• netconf-node-topology:keepalive-delay - Delay between sending of keepalive RPC messages (default value: 120 sec).
• netconf-node-topology:confirm-commit-timeout - The timeout for confirming the configuration by "confirming-commit" that was configured by "confirmed-commit". Configuration will be automatically reverted by device if the "confirming-commit" is not issued within the timeout period. This parameter has effect only on NETCONF nodes. (default value: 600 sec).

Parameters related to capabilities are often used when NETCONF device doesn't provide list of YANGs. Both parameters are optional.

• netconf-node-topology:yang-module-capabilities - Set a list of capabilities to override capabilities provided in device's hello message. It can be used for devices that do not report any yang modules in their hello message.
• netconf-node-topology:non-module-capabilities - Set a list of non-module based capabilities to override or merge non-module capabilities provided in device's hello message. It can be used for devices that do not report or incorrectly report non-module-based capabilities in their hello message.

Parameters related to installation of NETCONF or CLI nodes with uniconfig-native support.

• uniconfig-config:uniconfig-native-enabled - Whether uniconfig-native should be used for installation of NETCONF or CLI node. By default, this flag is set to 'false'.
• uniconfig-config:install-uniconfig-node-enabled - Whether node should be installed to UniConfig and unified layers. By default, this flag is set to 'true'.
• uniconfig-config:sequence-read-active - Forces reading of data sequentially when mounting device. By default, this flag is set to 'false'. This parameter has effect only on NETCONF nodes.
• uniconfig-config:whitelist - List of root YANG entities that should be read. This parameter has effect only on NETCONF nodes.
• uniconfig-config:blacklist - List of root YANG entities that should not be read from NETCONF device due to incompatibility with uniconfig-native or other malfunctions in YANG schemas. This parameter has effect only on NETCONF nodes.
• uniconfig-config:validation-enabled - Whether validation RPC should be used before submitting configuration of node. By default, this flag is set to 'true'. This parameter has effect only on NETCONF nodes.
• uniconfig-config:confirmed-commit-enabled - Whether confirmed-commit RPC should be used before submitting configuration of node. By default, this flag is set to 'true'. This parameter has effect only on NETCONF nodes.
• uniconfig-config:store-failed-installation - Whether the installation should be stored in the database if it fails (e.g. is unreachable). The node will be 'installed' even though it failed and the user has 2 options:
  • uninstall the device and reinstall it.
  • call sync-from-network to sync the data from the device.

Non-mandatory flag parameters that can be added to mount-request.

• netconf-node-topology:enabled-strict-parsing - Default value of enabled-strict-parsing parameter is set to 'true'. This may inflicts in throwing exception during parsing of received NETCONF messages in case of unknown elements. If this parameter is set to 'false', then parser should ignore unknown elements and not throw exception during parsing.
• netconf-node-topology:enabled-notifications - Default value of enabled-notifications is set to 'true'. If it is set to 'true' and NETCONF device supports notifications, NETCONF mountpoint will expose NETCONF notification and subscription services.
• netconf-node-topology:reconnect-on-changed-schema - Default value of reconnect-on-changed-schema is set to 'false'. If it is set to 'true', NETCONF notifications are supported by device, and NETCONF notifications are enabled ('enabled-notifications' flag), the connector would auto disconnect/reconnect when schemas are changed in the remote device. The connector subscribes (right after connect) to base netconf notifications and listens for netconf-capability-change notification
• netconf-node-topology:streaming-session - Default value of streaming-session parameter is set to 'false'. NETCONF session is created and optimized for receiving of NETCONF notifications from remote server.

Other non-mandatory parameters that can be added to mount-request.

• netconf-node-topology:schema-cache-directory - This parameter can be used for two cases:

  1. Explicitly set name of NETCONF cache directory. If it is not set, the name of the schema cache directory is derived from device capabilities during mounting process.
  2. Direct usage of the 'custom' NETCONF cache directory stored in the UniConfig 'cache' directory by name. This 'custom' directory must exist, must not be empty and also can not use the 'netconf-node-topology:yang-module-capabilities' parameter, because capability names will be generated from yang schemas stored in the 'custom' directory.

• netconf-node-topology:dry-run-journal-size - Creates dry-run mount-point and defines number of NETCONF RPCs in history for dry-run mount-point. Value 0 disables dry-run functionality (it is default value).

• netconf-node-topology:custom-connector-factory - Specification of the custom NETCONF connector factory. For example, if device doesn't support candidate data-store, this parameter should be set to 'netconf-customization-alu-ignore-candidate' string (default value is "default").

• netconf-node-topology:edit-config-test-option - Specification of the test-option parameter in the netconf edit-config message. Possible values are 'set', 'test-then-set' or 'test-only'. If the edit-config-test-option is not explicitly specified in the mount request, then the default value will be used ('test-then-set'). See RFC-6241 for more information about this feature.

• netconf-node-topology:concurrent-rpc-limit - Defines maximum number of concurrent RPCs, where 0 indicates no limit (it is default value).

curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:8181/rests/operations/connection-manager:install-node' \
--header 'Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46YWRtaW4=' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
        "input":{
            "node-id":"xr1",
            "netconf":{
                "netconf-node-topology:host":"10.0.0.1",
                "netconf-node-topology:port":830,
                "netconf-node-topology:tcp-only":false,
                "netconf-node-topology:username":"USERNAME",
                "netconf-node-topology:password":"PASSWORD",
                "netconf-node-topology:session-timers" : {
                    "netconf-node-topology:keepalive-delay": 5
                },
                "netconf-node-topology:other-parameters" : {
                    "netconf-node-topology:dry-run-journal-size": 180
                },
                "uniconfig-config:uniconfig-native-enabled":true,
                "uniconfig-config:blacklist":{
                    "uniconfig-config:path":[
                        "openconfig-interfaces:interfaces",
                        "ietf-interfaces:interfaces",
                        "openconfig-vlan:vlans",
                        "openconfig-routing-policy:routing-policy",
                        "openconfig-lldp:lldp",
                        "Cisco-IOS-XR-l2vpn-cfg:l2vpn",
                        "Cisco-IOS-XR-group-cfg:groups",
                        "openconfig-acl:acl",
                        "openconfig-network-instance:network-instances"
                    ]
                }
            }
        }
    }'

curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:8181/rests/operations/connection-manager:uninstall-node' \
--header 'Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46YWRtaW4=' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
    "input": {
        "node-id": "xr1",
        "connection-type": "netconf"
    }
}'