OTG with Ixia L23 Hardware: back-to-back setup

Overview

This example demonstrates how the OTG API can be used to control Keysight/Ixia L23 Network Test Hardware. The same Keysight Elastic Network Generator keng-controller that serves as the OTG API Endpoint for Ixia-c software test ports can be used with the hardware test ports. Such deployment model requires to use keng-layer23-hw-server container image that provides an interface between the controller and the hardware test ports. See the diagram below that illustrates the components of such setup:

Prerequisites

• System License Edition for Keysight Elastic Network Generator images. Read more in KENG.md

• Keysight Ixia Novus or AresOne Network Test Hardware with IxOS 9.20 Patch 4 or higher. NOTE: Currently, only Linux-based IxOS platforms are tested with KENG.

• Linux host or VM with sudo permissions and Docker support. Here is an example of deploying an Ubuntu VM otg using multipass:

  multipass launch 22.04 -n otg -c4 -m8G -d32G
  multipass shell otg
  

• Docker. Follow official instruction for

  • Ubuntu
  • Debian
  • CentOS

  After docker is installed, add current user to the docker group.

  sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
  

• Python3 (version 3.9 or higher), PIP and VirtualEnv

  sudo apt install python3 python3-pip python3.10-venv -y
  

  * Go version 1.19 or later

  sudo snap install go --channel=1.19/stable --classic
  

• git and envsubst commands (typically installed by default)

  sudo apt install git gettext-base -y
  

Install components

git clone --recursive https://github.com/open-traffic-generator/otg-examples.git
cd otg-examples/hw/ixhw-b2b

Deploy Keysight Elastic Network Generator

1. Initialize an environment variable LICENSE_SERVERS with a hostname/IP address of the Keysight License Server. Replace license_server_name with the actual hostname/IP address of your license server.

   export LICENSE_SERVERS="license_server_name"
   

2. Launch the deployment

   docker compose up -d
   

3. To make sure all the containers are running, use

   docker ps
   

   the list of containers should include:

   • ixhw-b2b-controller-1
   • ixhw-b2b-layer23-hw-server-1

4. Initialize environment variables with locations of Ixia L23 hardware ports. Replace ixos_ip_address, slot_number_X, port_number_X with values matching your equipment.

   export OTG_LOCATION_P1="ixos_ip_address;slot_number_1;port_number_1"
   export OTG_LOCATION_P2="ixos_ip_address;slot_number_2;port_number_2"
   

   For example, if IxOS management IP is 10.10.10.10 and you need to use ports 14 and 15 in the slot number 2:

   export OTG_LOCATION_P1="10.10.10.10;2;14"
   export OTG_LOCATION_P2="10.10.10.10;2;15"
   

Run OTG traffic flows with Python snappi library

1. Setup virtualenv for Python

   python3 -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate
   pip install -r requirements.txt
   

2. Run flows via snappi script, reporting port metrics

   ./snappi/otg-flows.py -m port
   

3. Run flows via snappi script, reporting port flow

   ./snappi/otg-flows.py -m flow
   

Cleanup

To stop the deployment, run:

docker compose down

OpenConfig Feature Profiles B2B test

Deploy Keysight Elastic Network Generator

1. Initialize an environment variable LICENSE_SERVERS with a hostname/IP address of the Keysight License Server. Replace license_server_name with the actual hostname/IP address of your license server.

   export LICENSE_SERVERS="license_server_name"
   

2. Launch the deployment

   docker compose -p keng1 --file fp.compose.yml --file fp.compose.ports.yml up -d
   

3. To make sure all the containers are running, use

   docker ps
   

   the list of containers should include:

   • keng1-gnmi-server-1
   • keng1-controller-1
   • keng1-layer23-hw-server-1

4. Initialize environment variables with locations of Ixia L23 hardware ports. Replace ixos_ip_address, slot_number_X, port_number_X with values matching your equipment.

   export OTG_LOCATION_P1="ixos_ip_address;slot_number_1;port_number_1"
   export OTG_LOCATION_P2="ixos_ip_address;slot_number_2;port_number_2"
   

   For example, if IxOS management IP is 10.10.10.10 and you need to use ports 14 and 15 in the slot number 2:

   export OTG_LOCATION_P1="10.10.10.10;2;14"
   export OTG_LOCATION_P2="10.10.10.10;2;15"
   

5. Create an ONDATRA binding file otgb2b.binding by using otgb2b.template as a template and substituting OTG port locations using the environmental variables initialized in the previous step.

   cat otgb2b.template | envsubst > otgb2b.binding
   export OTGB2B_BINDING="$(pwd)/otgb2b.binding"
   

Run FeatureProfiles OTG HW back-2-back test

1. Clone FeatureProfiles fork from Open Traffic Generator org. The back-2-back test we're going to use is published under the static branch we need to clone:

   git clone -b static --depth 1 https://github.com/open-traffic-generator/featureprofiles.git fp-static
   

2. Run FeatureProfiles OTG HW B2B test

   cd fp-static/feature/experimental/otg_only
   go test -v otgb2b_test.go -testbed otgb2b.testbed -binding "${OTGB2B_BINDING}"
   cd ../../../..
   

Multi-seat deployment

If you need to support multiple concurrent seats (simultaneous tests) on the same VM, it is possible to launch several parallel instances of Keysight Elastic Network Generator.

1. What you need for that is to choose a set of different TCP ports that keng-controller and otg-gnmi-server would be mapped to on the host. As an example, see the file fp.compose.ports2.yml. You would also need start the deployment using a non-default project name, so that the second set of containers would run over a dedicated network.

   docker compose -p keng2 --file fp.compose.yml --file fp.compose.ports2.yml up -d
   

2. Now create a second ONDATRA binding file, for example otgb2b.binding2:

   cp otgb2b.binding otgb2b.binding2
   # change TCP ports for both otg and gnmi targets
   # change port name strings to use different IxHW ports
   vi otgb2b.binding2
   export OTGB2B_BINDING="$(pwd)/otgb2b.binding2"
   

Now you're ready to run the two parallel tests via the same VM using two different binding files.

Cleanup

To stop the deployment, run:

docker compose -p keng1 --file fp.compose.yml down
docker compose -p keng2 --file fp.compose.yml down

Troubleshooting

Licensing Errors

If you see the following error when running the featureprofiles test:

the configuration contains port of type Ixia-Hardware, which is not supported in community edition

it means that you either didn't provide the proper LICENSE_SERVERS environment variable, or the license server is not reachable from the controller container. To further check if the received the list of License Servers, run:

docker logs keng1-controller-1 | grep -i LicenseServers

The list should not be empty.

If the list is not empty, check if the controller can reach the License Server by looking for Session successfully created with license server message in the logs:

docker logs keng1-controller-1 | grep -i licensing

Diagnostics

To collect diagnostics logs from all the components of the lab, run:

../../utils/collect-ixia-c-hw-logs.sh

It will create a logs-DATE.tar.gz file you can share with Keysight for troubleshooting.

TIP. Use make logs if you have make on your system