CML 2.5 Release Notes

Cisco Modeling Labs (CML) is a network simulation platform. CML 2.5 is the latest feature release of CML and introduces support for graphical annotations in the topology, resource limits on multi-user CML installations, and further improvements for cluster deployments.

New and Changed Information

This table shows any published changes to this CML 2.5 release notes document.

Installing or Migrating to CML 2.5

Upgrading to CML 2.5

If your CML instance is already running CML 2.3.0 or later, you can upgrade it to CML 2.5.1. See the In-Place Upgrade page for upgrade instructions. In-place upgrades from CML version 2.2.3 or earlier are not supported.

Migrating from an Existing CML 2.2 Installation

It is not possible to upgrade a CML 2.2.x installation to CML 2.5. You must migrate to a new CML 2.5 installation. If you have an existing CML 2.2.x installation, the migration tool will help you migrate your data from your existing CML installation to the new CML 2.5 installation. If your existing CML installation is CML 2.0.x or 2.1.x, we recommend first following the CML 2.2.x documentation to perform an in-place upgrade to CML 2.2.3 before migrating to a new CML 2.5 installation. The following video demonstrates the migration process from CML 2.2 to CML 2.3, and you can use the same steps to migrate from CML 2.2.3 to CML 2.5.

Note: If you choose to migrate an existing, licensed CML 2.2.x installation to a new installation of CML 2.5, you must deregister the old CML instance before decommissioning it. See Licensing - Deregistration for instructions on deregistering a CML instance.

1. Deregister your existing CML 2.2.x instance.
2. Install CML 2.5 (see below).
   • Since you are migrating from an existing CML 2.2.x installation, mounting the refplat ISO before running the CML 2.5 installation is optional.
   • If the reference platform ISO is mounted before starting the CML 2.5 installation, the setup script will copy reference platform images from a mounted refplat ISO to the local disk.
   • You can skip the copying of reference platform images during installation because the migration tool will copy all of the reference platform images from your CML 2.2.x installation to the new CML 2.5 installation.
   • Only mount the new refplat ISO if you want to add the new versions of the reference platforms in addition to the existing versions from your CML 2.2.x installation.
3. Follow the instructions in the migration tool's README.md to migrate data from your existing CML 2.2 installation to your new CML 2.5 installation.
4. License your new CML 2.5 installation.

The migration tool can be found on your CML 2.5 installation at /usr/local/bin/virl2-migrate-data.sh. You can also download the latest version of the migration tool from https://github.com/CiscoDevNet/cml-community/tree/master/scripts/migration-tool.

The migration tool also supports offline migration. If you want to install CML 2.5 on the same server that is currently running CML 2.2.x, you can use the Offline Version Migration instructions to back up the data to a .tar file. That way, you can transfer the .tar file to a separate datastore temporarily while you reinstall with CML 2.5. As always, make sure that you deregister your old CML 2.2.x instance before decommissioning it and starting the CML 2.5 installation.

Installing CML 2.5

The CML Installation Guide provides detailed steps for installing your new CML 2.5 instance.

• In CML 2.5, all of the reference platform VM images must be copied to the local disk of the CML instance. Be sure to provision enough disk space for your new CML instance to accommodate the reference platforms.
• Downloading the refplat ISO file is optional if you are migrating from an existing CML 2.2.x instance. The migration tool will migrate all of your existing image definitions and VM images from your old CML 2.2.x instance.
• Be sure to check the System Requirements for updated system requirements.
• Important: After the reference platforms are copied to disk during the Initial Set-Up, wait a couple of minutes for the CML services to finish restarting before clicking OK to continue. If you click OK too soon, the initial set-up can fail. (See the Known Issues below.)

Summary of Changes

This section details new and changed features in the new release. Bug fixes are listed in the subsequent section.

UI Changes

Right-Click Menu Replaces Hover Menu on Nodes

CML 2.5 moves away from the old hover menu in favor of a more traditional right-click context menu. In previous CML releases, when you hovered your mouse over a node in the Workbench, a ring-shaped action menu or hover menu appeared. This menu permitted you to start a node or open the console for a running node.

In CML 2.5.0+, if you hover the mouse over a node, nothing will happen. To open the context menu for a node in the Workbench, right-click on that node in the topology canvas.

Menu	CML Versions	Screenshot
Right-click on a node to open the node's context menu.	CML 2.5.0+
Right-click on a link to open the link's context menu.	CML 2.5.0+
Obsolete. Hovering the mouse over a node will not open this menu in CML 2.5+. Right-click the node to open the context menu instead.	CML 2.0 - CML 2.4.1

Annotations

CML 2.5 introduces the ability to add graphical annotations to a CML lab. You may use the tools in the Workbench's toolbar to add rectangles, ellipses, lines, arrows, and text annotations.

For more information, see Annotations in the CML User Guide.

Grid Lines and Snap-To-Grid

The Workbench canvas now incorporates a background grid and snap-to-grid for positioning elements in the canvas. Snap-to-grid makes it easy to align the elements in your lab. Snap-to-grid is documented in the Workbench page.

Resource Limits

Resource limits is a new feature which was introduced with the release of Cisco Modeling Labs (CML) 2.5. This feature enables the administrator of a multi-user system to limit the available resources for either individual users or sets of users. The resources which can be limited are:

• Node licenses: How many licenses from the overall available licenses can be used by a user or a set of users?
• Memory usage: How much memory in megabytes can be used?
• CPU usage: How much CPU capacity can be used by a user or set of users?
• External Connectors: Which external connectors can be used by a user or set of users?

Resource limits are configured using elements which are referred to as resource pools.

Each user can be associated with at most one resource pool. If no resource pool is configured, then the user is not restricted by any resource limits.

If a resource pool has exactly one user associated then it is called an individual pool. If a resource pool has more than one user associated, then it is called a shared pool.

Since resource limits affect the operation of a multi-user system, it does not make sense to apply resource limits on a single-user deployment, like CML-Personal or CML-Personal Plus.

For details on using resource limits, see Resource Limits in the CML Admin Guide.

Node Definitions and Image Definitions

Changing or deleting a node or image definition can have system-wide impacts on your CML server. These changes affect all users whose labs use the affected node or image definition. To help CML administrators provide a stable network simulation platform, CML 2.5 no longer permits non-admin users to create, modify, or delete node or image definitions. If you are a non-admin user, contact one of the users with administrator privileges on your CML instance for assistance with creating, modifying, or deleting a node or image definition.

CML 2.5 increases the IOS XRv 9000 node definition's boot.timeout parameter from 1000 seconds (about 16 minutes) to 3600 seconds (1 hour). If you provide a day-0 configuration with your IOS XRv 9000 nodes, ensure that they have console logging enabled. If console logging is disabled, CML will not be able to transition your IOS XRv 9000 node to BOOTED state until the 1 hour timeout has elapsed.

CML normally transitions a node to BOOTED state as soon as the node outputs one of the Boot Line messages listed in the node definition's Boot section. Those are the messages that indicate that the node has fully booted and loaded the day-0 configuration. If the node does not output any of those messages, CML uses the Timeout to transition the node to the BOOTED state. The old IOS XRv 9000 timeout value was too small, and CML was prematurely transitioning the node to BOOTED state on some CML instances. The longer timeout should prevent that from happening, but if your CML instance was relying on the boot timeout to transition the IOS XRv 9000 nodes to BOOTED state, it may appear that your IOS XRv 9000 nodes are taking much longer to boot.

Clustering (Phase 2)

CML 2.4.0 introduced support for CML clusters. This release builds on the initial clustering capabilities, improving the handling of disconnected cluster compute members.

• a disconnected compute host puts nodes that were deployed on that compute host into a DISCONNECTED state
• a node in DISCONNECTED state may be abandoned by wiping the node and restarting it anew on another available compute
• compute host API to retrieve state and modify admission state from READY (fully operational) to ONLINE (does not allow node starts) to UNREGISTERED (slated for removal - not for controller host)
• compute host API to remove an UNREGISTERED compute host from a cluster
• improved node state consistency from unexpected transitions
• administration of cluster computes from the controller's Cockpit page - only for the initial system administrator user, whose username (sysadmin by default) will be the same on all members of the cluster

API Changes

CML 2.5 introduces several changes to the REST-based web service APIs. For details about a specific API, log into the CML UI and click Tools > API Documentation to view the CML API documentation page.

APIs Removed in CML 2.5

This table summarizes the API endpoints that have been removed in CML 2.5.

APIs Deprecated in CML 2.5

This table summarizes the API endpoints that have been deprecated in CML 2.5

New APIs in CML 2.5

This table summarizes the API endpoints that are new in CML 2.5.

APIs Changed in CML 2.5

This table summarizes the APIs that have been changed in CML 2.5.

Other Changes

Bug Fixes

Known Issues and Caveats for CML 2.5

nmcli con

check con del bridge0-p1 
nmcli con add type bridge-slave \
    con-name bridge0-p1 \
    ifname enp9s0 master bridge0 
nmcli con down enp10s0 
# verify that the set up is now correct 
nmcli con