Creating a new fabric intent: flexible leaf/spine

Before you create a new flexible leaf/spine fabric intent, ensure you have done the following:

  • Created a region to which the fabric can belong; see Creating a region.
  • Verified that the intended version of the SR Linux software is available in the system's software catalog, as described in Software and image catalogs.
This procedure describes how to create a flexible leaf/spine fabric intent intended for deployment to real hardware.

You can also create a virtual fabric intent for testing in a virtual environment. For the small differences in the fabric design procedure for that purpose, see Digital Sandbox.

A fabric intent normally allows you to select a single hardware type for all leaf nodes within a fabric intent. However, the Fabric Services System supports the inclusion of a second set of leaf hardware with some additional steps. For the procedure to create such a fabric intent, see Adding a second type of hardware for leaf nodes.

  1. Click to open the main menu.
  2. In the main menu, select Fabric Intents.
  3. Click the + CREATE A FABRIC INTENT button.
    Templates are displayed in a grid view by default. To switch to the list view, select in the template selection screen. Click to return to the grid view.
  4. Select the Flexible Leaf Spine template.
  5. Click the CREATE button.
  6. On the left-side panel, enter or select the basic parameters that define your intended fabric as described in Basic parameters for flexible leaf/spine fabric intent
    At the top of the left-side panel, the name of the template you selected in step 4 is displayed as the "Reference Template".
    Table 1. Basic parameters for flexible leaf/spine fabric intent

    Parameter

    Description

    Fabric Type

    Select Real. This creates a fabric intent intended for deployment to real-world hardware.

    The Digital Sandbox option is used to create a virtual fabric to test and validating prospective designs. This option is described in Digital Sandbox.

    Fabric Intent Name

    Enter the name that identifies this fabric.

    Description

    Optionally, add information to describe the fabric intent.

    Prefix Naming

    Enter a string to be added at the beginning of the name of every node in the fabric intent. The rest of the node name is automatically generated.

    For example, enter "A01" here to assign nodes names such as "A01-leaf-1" and "A01-spine-1".

    The Prefix Naming string must be unique to each fabric.

    Region

    Click the drop-down and select an already-created region from the list. This identifies the region that contains the new fabric intent.

    To create or edit a region now, click the Regions icon ( ) to navigate to the Regions page. This exits the fabric intent creation procedure. You must begin fabric intent creation again after creating the new region.

    Software Catalog/Image ID

    Select the version of SR Linux software to load onto all of the nodes in the new fabric.

    Currently supported:

    • SR Linux 21.11.2-72
    • SR Linux 21.6.4-6

    Spine Node Type

    Select a supported type of hardware to act as a spine node.

    Number of Spine Nodes

    Specify the number of devices of the specified type to act as spine nodes.

    Leaf Node Type

    Select a supported type of hardware to act as a leaf node.

    Note: When initially creating a fabric intent, you can only choose one hardware type to be used for all leaf nodes in the fabric. To use a second hardware type for some leaf nodes, you must first deploy the initial fabric intent and then create a new version that includes a pod. The pod represent a second set of leaf nodes within the same fabric which can be of a different hardware type. For more information about configuring fabrics with multiple hardware types for its leaves, see Adding a second type of hardware for leaf nodes.

    Number of Leaf Nodes

    Specify the number of devices of the specified type to act as leaf nodes.

    Labels

    This area is disabled when creating the initial fabric intent.

    Deploy Trigger Percentage

    The minimum percentage of nodes within the fabric intent that must be physically installed before the system allows you to deploy the intent to hardware.

    For all real fabrics, this value is fixed at 0%.

    For a full explanation of the impact of this setting, see The Deployment Trigger Percentage setting.

    There are more, optional parameters you can use to fine-tune the fabric intent design at this stage. For more information about these parameters, see Appendix: Fabric intent parameters.
  7. Click to save the fabric intent. When you save the fabric intent, the system:
    • updates the state of the fabric intent to Created.
    • updates the version number of the fabric intent to 1.0.
    • enables the GENERATE FABRIC button.
  8. Click GENERATE FABRIC.
The system generates a recommended topology for your fabric based on the template you selected and the parameters you provided.

When generating the topology, the system also generates the various cable connections and the individual node configurations required to support this fabric topology.

During fabric generation, the fabric intent state advances through the following:

  • Cable Map in Progress
  • Config Generation in Progress
  • Config Generation Done

After the generation is complete, the resulting topology displays in the main area of the Fabric Intents page.

Now that you have generated the fabric intent, you can proceed to any of the following:

Note:

The following configurations are not supported on the initial version of a fabric intent. For the following configurations, you must first need to save and deploy Version 1.0 of the fabric intent, and then create a new version of the intent (as described in Creating a new version of a fabric intent) in which the following actions are permitted: