Binding Logical Infrastructure with Custom Attributes
The primary purpose of infra.proto is to define and design a generic network fabric. This enables end users to specify the devices as nodes and links as edges. The data model also allows for the definition and design of devices by adding links and components within the device, modeling the device internals as a subgraph. Another data model, annotate.proto, allows for the definition and binding of various parameters within the generic infrastructure. Users can bind:
- Vendor-specific data
- Additional qualities of the infrastructure
- Specific device performance attributes, such as:
- Latency
- Routing tables
This helps to add more context and content to infrastructure elements.
The main objective is to decouple various bindings from the infrastructure, separating the concerns of designing the logical infrastructure from the additional data needed for specific use-cases.
Example: Annotating Device Instances to device type
Lets annotate devices to types in our previous example:
The proposal is to include a Device Type for our infrastructure devices, with the types being physical_switch, physical_host, vm_host, and vm_switch. This categorization would offer additional insights into the nature of the device. Annotating the device instances present in our infra, we get the following schema:
YAML Definition
JSON Definition
[
{
"targets": [
{
"infrastructure": "Infrastructure"
}
],
"data": {
"name": "DeviceTypes",
"value": {
"@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.protobuf.ListValue",
"value": [
{
"device_instance": "host",
"device_type": "physical_host"
},
{
"device_instance": "rack_switch",
"device_type": "physical_switch"
}
]
}
}
}
]
We need to set the target, a list of elements defined in the infrastructure, and provide a value. The value contains a schema defining the device_instance and its associated device_type.
Note: The schema can be internal to an organization.
Example: Annotating Scale Up Switch with Open Config Interface
Another example is to define an OpenConfigInterface for our scale up switch(sosw) :