Creating and assigning profiles

In this tutorial we will be creating a Profile for a network device interface, and then create multiple interfaces using that profile.

The profile will be used to create interfaces that will connect end-users. We want all the end-user interfaces in our network to have exactly the same configuration.

The following configuration attributes need to be defined in the profile:

• Profile: end-user-interface
• Status: active
• Enabled: true
• Auto negotiation: enabled
• MTU: 1500 bytes
• Mode: Access
• Untagged VLAN: 10
• Role: end-user

We will be assuming the following schema has been loaded into Infrahub, this is a requirement to be able to complete the rest of this guide.

---
version: "1.0"
nodes:
  - name: Interface
    namespace: Infra
    description: "Network Interface"
    label: "Interface"
    include_in_menu: true
    display_labels:
      - name__value
    order_by:
      - name__value
    uniqueness_constraints:
    attributes:
      - name: name
        kind: Text
        optional: false
        unique: true
      - name: description
        kind: Text
        optional: true
      - name: speed
        kind: Number
        optional: true
      - name: auto_negotiation
        kind: Boolean
        default_value: false
      - name: mtu
        label: MTU
        kind: Number
        default_value: 1500
      - name: enabled
        kind: Boolean
        default_value: false
      - name: untagged_vlan
        label: Untagged VLAN
        kind: Number
        optional: true
      - name: mode
        kind: Dropdown
        default_value: access
        choices:
          - name: access
            label: Access
          - name: trunk
            label: Trunk
      - name: status
        kind: Dropdown
        optional: true
        choices:
          - name: active
            label: Active
            description: "Fully operational and currently in service"
            color: "#7fbf7f"
          - name: provisioning
            label: Provisioning
            description: "In the process of being set up and configured"
            color: "#ffff7f"
          - name: maintenance
            label: Maintenance
            description: "Undergoing routine maintenance or repairs"
            color: "#ffd27f"
          - name: drained
            label: Drained
            description: "Temporarily taken out of service"
            color: "#bfbfbf"
      - name: role
        kind: Dropdown
        optional: true
        choices:
          - name: uplink
            label: Uplink
            description: "Interface connected to other network device"
            color: "#9090de"
          - name: end_user
            label: End user
            description: "Interface to connect end-user devices"
            color: "#ffa07a"
          - name: server
            label: Server
            description: "Interfaces to connect to servers"
            color: "#98b2d1"

From this schema Infrahub will generate a ProfileInfraInterface schema. Infrahub will also generate a GraphQL query ProfileInfraInterface and the GraphQL mutations ProfileInfraInterfaceCreate, ProfileInfraInterfaceDelete, ProfileInfraInterfaceUpdate and ProfileInfraInterfaceUpsert.

Profiles, at this stage, can be only be used from the GraphQL API or the Python SDK. In a future release we will add support for managing profiles using the web frontend.

Creating the profile

We can create the profile by executing the following GraphQL mutation:

mutation {
  ProfileInfraInterfaceCreate(
    data: {
      profile_name: {value: "end-user-interface"},
      status: {value: "active"},
      enabled: {value: true},
      auto_negotiation: {value: true},
      mtu: {value:1500},
      mode: {value: "access"},
      untagged_vlan: {value: 10},
      role: {value: "end_user"},
    }
  ) {
    ok
    object {
      id
    }
  }
}

Retrieving profiles from Infrahub

We can query Infrahub to retrieve the interface profile using the following GraphQL query

query {
  ProfileInfraInterface(profile_name__value: "end-user-interface") {
    edges {
      node {
        id
        profile_name {
          value
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Creating a node using a profile

We can now create multiple interfaces that will inherited the attributes we defined in our end-user-interface profile.

mutation {
  int0: InfraInterfaceCreate(
    data: {name: {value: "GigabitEthernet0/0/0"}, profiles: [{id: "end-user-interface"}]}
  ) {
    ok
    object {
      id
    }
  }
  int1: InfraInterfaceCreate(
    data: {name: {value: "GigabitEthernet0/0/1"}, profiles: [{id: "end-user-interface"}]}
  ) {
    ok
    object {
      id
    }
  }
  int2: InfraInterfaceCreate(
    data: {name: {value: "GigabitEthernet0/0/2"}, profiles: [{id: "end-user-interface"}]}
  ) {
    ok
    object {
      id
    }
  }
}

We will now query for one of the interfaces we created and check the values of the name and status attribute and the metadata.

query {
  InfraInterface(name__value: "GigabitEthernet0/0/0") {
    edges {
      node {
        name {
          value
          is_from_profile
        }
        status {
          value
          is_default
          is_from_profile
          source {
            id
            display_label
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

On the name attribute we can see that the is_from_profile property is False, indicating the name attribute was not inherited from a profile. The status attribute has the is_from_profile property set to True and the source__id property is set to the id of the profile from which the value was inherited.

The status attribute value is inherited from the profile, because we didn't specify a value for that attribute when we created the interface, hence the is_default property of the status attribute is True.

Overriding profile attribute values

We will now create another interface GigabitEthernet0/0/3 using the profile. But we want to override the value of the MTU attribute, which is defined in the profile. To do this we have to explicitly provide a value for the attribute.

mutation {
  InfraInterfaceCreate(
    data: {name: {value: "GigabitEthernet0/0/3"}, mtu: {value: 9000}, profiles: [{id: "end-user-interface"}]}
  ) {
    ok
    object {
      id
    }
  }
}

Using this query we can verify that the value for the MTU attribute and that it was not inherited from a profile.

query {
  InfraInterface(name__value: "GigabitEthernet0/0/3") {
    edges {
      node {
        mtu {
          value
          is_from_profile
        }
      }
    }
  }
}