1. NSP Device Configuration#

1.1 Objective#

Use Visual Studio Code (or code-server) with the NSP Intent Manager extension to create device-specific intent-types that can be used in the context of Device Configuration.

1.2 Technology explanation#

1.2.1 Visual Studio Code#

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a free, lightweight, and cross-platform source-code editor developed by Microsoft, with its core available under MIT License. While the official Microsoft distribution includes telemetry and branding, the underlying open-source project is actively developed by thousands of contributors worldwide. Backed by Microsoft and deeply integrated with GitHub, VS Code offers rich extensibility through the Visual Studio Code Marketplace, enabling developers to tailor their development environments with themes, debuggers, linters, and language support.

VS Code runs seamlessly on Windows, MacOS X, and Linux, and also powers browser-based development via code-server and GitHub Codespaces. Features like built-in Git support, Remote SSH, IntelliSense, and live share collaboration making it a top choice for developers. The well-documented extension API, comprehensive examples, and clean UX Guidelines encourage a thriving eco-system and consistent user experience.

You can download VS Code here and start exploring the modern, extensible, and developer-friendly environment shaping how code is written today.

NOKIA is actively contributing VS Code extensions to improve Developer eXperience around our networking products and technologies being used. In this hackathon, you have the opportunity to use the following extensions contributed by Nokia in action:

• NSP Intent Manager extension
• NSP Workflow Manager extension
• NSP Artifact Manager extension
• NSP connect extension
• EDA extension
• Containerlab extension
• NETCONF extension

1.2.2 Intent Manager#

Intent Manager is a module within the Nokia Network Services Platform (NSP) that enables intent-based networking (IBN) by translating higher-level objectives into automated network actions. It has the ability to abstract the complexity of network configuration by allowing operators to express what they want, rather than how to do it.

By separating declarative intent configuration (w/ validation) from intent operations like audits and synchronization, Intent Manager enables CRUD operations with operational lifecycle and control. The sync operation is used for deploying changes into the network but also to reconcile network object configuration in cases of misalignment, while audits are used to identify misalignments including network configuration drift.

The library of intent-types can be updated at runtime, while intent-types are developed in JavaScript using YANG-defined intent models. Using JavaScript enables full flexibility beyond pure configuration management. Intent Manager supports natively heterogeneous networks (multi-vendor, multi-domain).

1.2.3 NSP Device Configuration#

Device Management Configuration is an intent-based app for infrastructure configuration management (ICM). It uses Intent Manager as engine underneath, but comes with an optimized user-interface tailored for the needs of device-centric configuration. ICM adds advanced operational procedures for brownfield configuration discovery and cloning of intent instances.

There is the concept of device-specific intent-types in ICM, where a defined subtree of the device is exposed as intent-model. The main rational to use device models is to provide control over 100% of the device-level attributes, while device experts are not confused by any sort of normalization as the intent model is identical to what operators already know. Another advantage of this is, that intent-types can be widely auto-generated. Remind, going device-specific is a compromise, as intent-types become specific to given device vendors, families and releases, adding operational and integration complexity. While there is no abstraction using this approach, all configuration details are accessible via rich configuration forms, however, it is possible to adjust configuration forms to show the relevant configuration attributes only.

1.3 Before you start#

1.4 Tasks#

You should read these tasks from top-to-bottom before beginning the activity.

It is tempting to skip ahead but tasks may require you to have completed previous tasks before tackling them.

1.4.1 Install / Setup VS Code and the required extensions#

• Install Visual Studio Code
• Open VS Code and go to the Extensions side-bar
• Search for "NOKIA Intent Manager" and click "Install" to add the extension to your workspace.
• Open the Settings for the Intent Manager Extension
• Adjust the connection details for your NSP system: nsp.srexperts.netwith the username/password provided
• Change will take effect immediately; Reload is not required
• If you use the NSP connect extension (preferred), you can configure/connect to your NSP straight from the sidebar
• Once done, a new folder named Intent Manager appears in your VS Code workspace.
• This folder contains subfolders for intent-types (definitions) and intents (instances).

1.4.2 Create a new Intent-Type and Intent Instance#

Create and import intent-types:

• In your workspace, create an *.igen file with the desired NE configuration context (see below).
• As your NSP instance is shared between all participating groups, use unique filenames.
• The filename will become the name of the new intent-type, so it must be in kebap-case.
• Remind, the device must point to the ne-id (device-id) of a device with matching vendor, family, and release. In case of SR OS routers this is the IP-address of the system interface. For this hackathon, you may just select the system ip-address of PE1.
• You find an example below the instructions;
• Right-click on the *.igen file and select Generate intent-type from the context menu.
• The generation might take some time. You can monitor the progress in the OUTPUT panel.
• Check the intent-type contents.
• Right-click on the intent-type folder and select Upload intent-type from the context menu.
• The intent-type should appear on the NSP GUI https://nsp.srexperts.net/web/intent-manager/intent-types

{
    "description": "L3 ACL for Nokia SR OS devices (MD MODE)",
    "category": "policies",
    "role": "logical",
    "device": "XXXXXXXX",
    "context": "/nokia-conf:configure/filter/ip-filter"
}

Import intent-types and creating templates in ICM:

• Navigate to Device Management > Configuration intent-types.
• Import the newly created intent-type.
• Navigate to Configuration Templates.
• Create a new template using your intent-type.

Create an intent:

• Now you can move to Configuration Deployments.
• Create a new deployment using the previous template.

1.4.3 Create intent-types to configure ports, interfaces and ISIS bindings#

We've just learned step-by-step on how to quickly create brand new intent-types from small *.igen files. Now, turn is on you to create all required intent-types required for base router connectivity: Port Configuration, Interface Configuration and IS-IS Interface Configuration.

1.4.3.1 Port Config#

Let's start with port configuration.

{ 
    "description": "Port configuration on Nokia SR OS devices (MD MODE)",
    "category": "port",
    "role": "physical",
    "device": "XXXXXXXX",
    "context": "nokia-conf:/configure/port",
    "icmstyle": true,
    "maxdepth": 2,
    "exclude": ["sonet-sdh","tdm","otu","network","gnss","dwdm","access","scheduler","transceiver","dist-cpu-protection","ethernet","hybrid-buffer-allocation","modify-buffer-allocation"]
}

[/]
A:admin@g1-pe1# edit-config private 
INFO: CLI #2070: Entering private configuration mode
INFO: CLI #2061: Uncommitted changes are discarded on configuration mode exit

(pr)[/]
A:admin@g1-pe1# info configure port  1/1/c1
    admin-state enable
    connector {
        breakout c1-100g
    }

(pr)[/]
A:admin@g1-pe1# info configure port 1/1/c1/1
    admin-state enable
    description "link to P1"
    ethernet {
        mode network
    }

Now, import the intent-type into ICM, create a template and deployments.

1.4.3.2 Interface Config#

We continue with the IP interface configuration associated with the Base router instance.

{ 
    "description": "Interfaces creation on Nokia SR OS devices (MD MODE)",
    "category": "interface",
    "role": "logical",
    "device": "XXXXXXXX",
    "context": "nokia-conf:/configure/router=Base/interface",
    "icmstyle": true,
    "exclude": ["egress","ingress","ldp-sync-timer","load-balancing","lag","ptp-hw-assist","autoconfigure","ipsec","cflowd-parameters","hold-time","eth-cfm","ipv6","qos","if-attribute","untrusted","network-domains","external-reference","ipv4/icmp","ipv4/unnumbered","ipv4/urpf-check","ipv4/dhcp","ipv4/bfd","ipv4/secondary","ipv4/neighbor-discovery","ipv4/vrrp"]
}

(pr)[/]
A:admin@g1-pe1# info configure router interface p1
    port 1/1/c1/1
    ipv4 {
        primary {
            address 10.64.11.1
            prefix-length 31
        }
    }
    ipv6 {
        forward-ipv4-packets true
        address fd00:fde8:0:1:1:11:21:1 {
            prefix-length 127
        }
    }

Again, import the intent-type into ICM, create a template and deployments.

1.4.3.3 IS-IS Interface Config#

This is now out last step intent-type to bind the new IP interface to the IS-IS protocol.

{
    "description": "ISIS Interfaces on Nokia SR OS devices (MD MODE)",
    "category": "interface",
    "role": "logical",
    "device": "XXXXXXXX",
    "context": "nokia-conf:/configure/router=Base/isis=0/interface",
    "icmstyle": true
}

(pr)[/]
A:admin@g1-pe1# info configure router isis 0 interface p1
    interface-type point-to-point

Finally, import the intent-type into ICM, create a template and deployments.

(pr)[/]
A:admin@g1-pe1# quit-config 
INFO: CLI #2074: Exiting private configuration mode

[/]
A:admin@g1-pe1# show router isis interface 

===============================================================================
Rtr Base ISIS Instance 0 Interfaces 
===============================================================================
Interface                        Level CircID  Oper      L1/L2 Metric     Type
                                               State                      
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
system                           L2    1       Up        -/0              p2p
p1                               L1L2  3       Up        10/10            p2p
p2                               L1L2  4       Up        10/10            p2p
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interfaces : 3
===============================================================================

[/]
A:admin@g1-pe1# show  router isis adjacency 

===============================================================================
Rtr Base ISIS Instance 0 Adjacency 
===============================================================================
System ID                Usage State Hold Interface                     MT-ID
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
g1-p1                    L2    Up    23   p1                            0
g1-p2                    L2    Up    22   p2                            0
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adjacencies : 2
===============================================================================

1.5 What else could you do???#

Brilliant, you've mastered this exercise. Using the community approach with *.igen files really makes the job of intent-type development easy. Even if you are expert on the node or management systems - but not soo much a JavaScript/YANG developer.

But you don't need to stop here. Have you already tried the discover a brownfield configuration from PE1, or did you create a new one? Have you tried to change the device configuration directly using CLI and then run audits and reconcile? There are many things to try out. Maybe you just want to get more knowledgeable on schema-form customization using our new graphical view-config editor. Remind, the limit is your own creativity.

Here some more asks, if you are overwhelmed by the simplicity of this approach and your creativity got blocked:

• create an intent-type for customers
• create an intent-type for lag
• create an intent-type for ISIS instance but exclude interfaces.

1.6 Reference#

1.6.1 Intent Type Generator Files#

Remember, the starting point for device-specific auto-generation is always an *.igen file, which are in JSON format. As Visual Studio Code is a text editor, nothing is as easy to create those files. Here is the list of supported attributes of *.igen files:

{
    "category": "policies",
    "role": "logical",
    "description": "SAP ingress QoS policy on Nokia SR OS devices (MD MODE)",

    "context": "nokia-conf:/configure/qos/sap-ingress",
    "device": "XXXXXXXX",

    "intent_type": "icm-sros-sap-ingress-policy",
    "author": "hackthon25",
    "exclude": [],
    "maxdepth": -1,
    "labels": ["GraalJS", "ApprovedMisalignments"],
    "date": "2025-02-28",

    "withdefaults": true,
    "applygroups": true,
    "constraints": true,
    "icmstyle": true
}