RFC: Implement Support for Multiple Different Devices

[lykinsbd]

Today, there is only one device available in the transcripts, and there is no ability to select a different device.

We need to decide how to start implementing support for different device types, and how to manage/instantiate them.

This will require some thought/planning around the best way to specify a scenario like the following (as an example):

• I want 10 fake Cisco ASAs
• I want 10 fake Cisco ISRs
• I want 100 fake Juniper MXes

Perhaps the initial configuration simply round-robins through all the devices in transcript_map.yaml and deploys the one of each up to the threshold of maximum listeners?

Is a configuration file specifying the desired topology needed?

@tbotnz and @wrgeorge1983 thoughts?

[tbotnz]

@lykinsbd what are your thoughts on the actual end use cases for this?

• 1. Do you envision more use cases where this would emulate complex topologies of multiple platforms running different transcript maps eg. 10X Juniper SMX with different transcripts per device?
• 2. OR do you envision more use cases where its just a bulk amount of the device running the same transcripts per platform?
• 3. OR is it both?

The use cases driven by the netpalm project would lean towards more option 2 and in this case some kind of round robin-ing or number of instances per platform would be sufficient?

Ultimately we need to keep it simple for the end developers whilst catering to the core use cases / direction of the project

[lykinsbd]

I was leaning more towards use case two, at least initially. Many types of devices but uniform transcripts among devices of a given type.

[tbotnz]

Sounds 👍

[lykinsbd]

The end of 2020 was crazy, par for 2020 itself, but I have more time now in the evenings to devote to this project now.

I will have a PR soon with changes to the configuration management and argument parsing to set us up for managing multiple device types, etc.

[brobare]

Put anymore thought into this, @lykinsbd? Have something (Accedian) that would be pretty neat to be able to use this for.