Creating a new fabric intent: backbone

Before you create a new fabric intent, ensure you have done the following:

  • Created a region to which the backbone fabric intent can belongs; see Deployment regions.
  • Verified that the intended version of the SR Linux software is available in the software catalog, as described in Software and image catalogs.
  • Created and deployed the flexible leaf/spine fabrics and that are planned to fall under the new backbone fabric intent. You must select the participating flexible leaf/spine fabrics as part of the backbone fabric creation process.
Note: This procedure can be used to create a fabric consiting of nodes that use SR Linux. For non-SR Linux nodes (such as 210 WBX nodes), you must create a fabric using an imported topology as described in Manual fabric topologies

After you create some flexible leaf/spine fabric intents, you can use a backbone intent to help existing fabric intents to communicate with one another, and communicate with an external network through the backbone's uplinks.

This procedure describes how to create a backbone fabric intent intended for deployment to real hardware.

You can also create a virtual backbone 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 creates configuration files for all of the participating nodes based on the parameters you select for the fabric intent itself, and by default these configurations is the same for all participating nodes. To customize the configuration for one or more nodes within the fabric intent, you can create one or more configuration overrides. This process is described in Global configuration overrides.

  1. Click to open the main menu.
  2. In the main menu, select Fabric Intents.
  3. Click the + CREATE A FABRIC INTENT button.
  4. Select the Back Bone template.
  5. Click the CREATE button.
    The New Fabric Intents page displays.

    At the top of the left-side panel, the name of the template you selected in step 4 displays as the "Reference Template".

  6. On the left-side panel, enter or select the basic parameters that define your intended fabric as described in Required parameters for fabric intents.
    Note: For Fabric Type, select Real.
    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 Optional parameters for fabric intents.
  7. Use the Fabric Intents field to select the already-deployed flexible leaf/spine fabrics that fall under the new backbone. Add fabric intents by doing the following:
    1. Click the Edit ( ) icon. The Fabric Intents list opens, filtered to show deployed fabrics.
    2. Check the box at the left edge of the row for each fabric you want to connect to the backbone.
    3. Click the SELECT INTENTS button. The Fabric Intents page closes, returning you to the Fabric Intent creation page.
  8. Click to save a fabric intent. The Generate Fabric button is enabled.
  9. Click the GENERATE FABRIC button.
The system generates a recommended topology for your fabric, based on the fabric 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. The resulting topology displays in the main area of the Fabric Intents page.

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

  • Optionally, explore the fabric.

  • Optionally, view the fabric intent as code.

  • Optionally, add labels to objects in the fabric intent.

  • Associate some or all of the planned nodes in the fabric intent with real-world hardware.

  • Add the backbone intent to the region's deployment pipeline. From the pipeline you can then deploy the backbone intent.