Getting NSO
This document provides instructions on getting started with Network Services Orchestrator.
Requirements
For development purposes, choose between the following:
- Linux for x86_64 or arm64
- macOS Darwin for x86_64 or arm64
A detailed list of NSO installation requirements can be found in the NSO Getting Started guide chapter Installation.
Download Your NSO Free Trial Installer and Cisco NEDs
This evaluation copy has been provided under the terms of the Cisco NSO Evaluation License. There are two versions of the NSO installer for macOS and Linux systems, respectively:
Installation
Note: The recommended guide for installing NSO is the NSO Getting Started guide. The description below is a quick-start version.
Operating System
Cisco NSO can run on macOS or Linux systems. If you are a Windows user (or do not wish to install it natively on your laptop), you can install NSO on a Linux virtual machine or in a container.
If you use Docker, there are pre-built system install images available. See the NSO Administration guide.
There are NSO Playgrounds available to dive right in and try out examples in a user-friendly browser-based integrated development environment (IDE).
Local vs. System Installation
Before you install NSO onto your system, you need to decide whether to do a "System" or "Local" installation. Here's a simple breakdown of the two.
- Use System Install when installing NSO for a centralized, "always-on" production-grade purpose. System installs configure NSO as a system daemon that starts and ends with the underlying operating system. Linux PAM is used instead of NSO local authentication using the admin and oper default users, and the file structure is distributed.
- Use Local Install for development, lab, and evaluation purposes. It unpacks all the application components, including docs and examples. The developer can use local installs to run multiple unrelated instances of NSO for different labs and demos on a single workstation.
This guide will use a Local Installation
of NSO for those just getting started. The NSO Getting Started guide chapter Installation details handling Local Installation
and System Installation.
Performing a Local Installation
Once you've installed the prereqs and downloaded the NSO installation file for your operating system, you are ready to do your installation.
- Open up a terminal and navigate to the directory where you downloaded the installer.
Ensure you have the correct installer binary for your OS,
darwin
is for macOS, andlinux
for Linux distributions.
cd ~/Downloads
ls -l nso*.bin
-rw-r--r--@ 1 user staff 199M Dec 15 11:45 nso-6.0.darwin.x86_64.installer.bin
-rw-r--r--@ 1 user staff 199M Dec 15 11:45 nso-6.0.darwin.x86_64.signed.bin
If your file is a signed.bin file, this means that Cisco has digitally signed the file you downloaded, and when you execute it, you'll verify the signature and unpack the installer.bin. If you have the installer.bin skip down past the signed steps.
Use the
sh
command to "run" thesigned.bin
to verify the certificate and extract the installer binary and other files.sh nso-6.0.darwin.x86_64.signed.bin # Output Unpacking... Verifying signature... Downloading CA certificate from http://www.cisco.com/security/pki/certs/crcam2.cer ... Successfully downloaded and verified crcam2.cer. Downloading SubCA certificate from http://www.cisco.com/security/pki/certs/innerspace.cer ... Successfully downloaded and verified innerspace.cer. Successfully verified root, subca and end-entity certificate chain. Successfully fetched a public key from tailf.cer. Successfully verified the signature of nso-6.0.darwin.x86_64.installer.bin using tailf.cer
If it all comes back green, you're in good shape and ready to install. Here is what was unpacked.
ls -l # Output -rw-r--r-- 1 user staff 1.8K Nov 29 06:05 README.signature -rw-r--r-- 1 user staff 12K Nov 29 06:05 cisco_x509_verify_release.py -rwxr-xr-x 1 user staff 199M Nov 29 05:55 nso-6.0.darwin.x86_64.installer.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 user staff 256B Nov 29 06:05 nso-6.0.darwin.x86_64.installer.bin.signature -rwxr-xr-x@ 1 user staff 199M Dec 15 11:45 nso-6.0.darwin.x86_64.signed.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 user staff 1.4K Nov 29 06:05 tailf.cer
- The NSO installer
nso-VERSION.OS.ARCH.installer.bin
- Signature generated for the NSO image
nso-VERSION.OS.ARCH.installer.bin.signature
- An enclosed Cisco signed
tailf.cer
x.509 end-entity certificate containing the public key that is used to verify the signature. README.signature
file which briefs you more details on the unpacked content and the steps on "How to run the signature verification program". If you would like to manually verify the signature, please refer to the steps in this file.cisco_x509_verify_release.py
python program that can be used to verify the 3-tier x.509 certificate chain and signature.
First, checkout the
--help
on the installer binary using thesh nso-6.0.darwin.x86_64.installer.bin --help
command. Notice the two options for--local-install
or--system-install
sh nso-6.0.darwin.x86_64.installer.bin --help # Output This is the NCS installation script. Usage: ./nso-6.0.darwin.x86_64.installer.bin [--local-install] LocalInstallDir Installs NCS in the LocalInstallDir directory only. This is convenient for test and development purposes. Usage: ./nso-6.0.darwin.x86_64.installer.bin --system-install [--install-dir InstallDir] [--config-dir ConfigDir] [--run-dir RunDir] [--log-dir LogDir] [--run-as-user User] [--keep-ncs-setup] [--non-interactive] Does a system install of NCS, suitable for deployment. Static files are installed in InstallDir/ncs-<vsn>. The first time --system-install is used, the ConfigDir, RunDir, and LogDir directories are also created and populated for config files, run-time state files, and log files, respectively, and an init script for start of NCS at system boot and user profile scripts are installed. Defaults are: InstallDir - /opt/ncs ConfigDir - /etc/ncs RunDir - /var/opt/ncs LogDir - /var/log/ncs By default, the system install will run NCS as the root user. If the --run-as-user option is given, the system install will instead run NCS as the given user. The user will be created if it does not already exist. If the --non-interactive option is given, the installer will proceed with potentially disruptive changes (e.g. modifying or removing existing files) without asking for confirmation.
For the installation directory or
LocalInstallDir
, the recommendation is to install it into your $HOME directory into a folder called~/nso-VERSION
. So if our version is6.0
, our directory will be~/nso-6.0
.Run the installer with the argument
--local-install ~/nso-6.0
to install it into your home directorysh nso-6.0.darwin.x86_64.installer.bin --local-install ~/nso-6.0 # Output INFO Using temporary directory /var/folders/90/n5sbctr922336_0jrzhb54400000gn/T//ncs_installer.93831 to stage NCS installation bundle INFO Unpacked ncs-6.0 in /Users/user/nso-6.0 INFO Found and unpacked corresponding DOCUMENTATION_PACKAGE INFO Found and unpacked corresponding EXAMPLE_PACKAGE INFO Found and unpacked corresponding JAVA_PACKAGE INFO Generating default SSH hostkey (this may take some time) INFO SSH hostkey generated INFO Environment set-up generated in /Users/user/nso-6.0/ncsrc INFO NSO installation script finished INFO Found and unpacked corresponding NETSIM_PACKAGE INFO NCS installation complete
That's it, you're installed.
Exploring the Installation
Before we startup NSO, let's just look at what we have.
Go ahead and cd
into the new installation directory.
cd ~/nso-6.0
Documentation
Note: Links to the online version of the NSO Guides and NSO Extension API Reference documentation.
Along with the binaries, NSO installs a full set of documentation available in the in the doc/
folder in ~/nso-6.0
.
ls -l doc/
drwxr-xr-x 5 user staff 160B Nov 29 05:19 api/
drwxr-xr-x 14 user staff 448B Nov 29 05:19 html/
-rw-r--r-- 1 user staff 202B Nov 29 05:19 index.html
drwxr-xr-x 17 user staff 544B Nov 29 05:19 pdf/
Feel free to open up the index.html
file in your favorite browser and poke around (you can use the open
command in the terminal to open the file). You'll find installation, admin, user, development, and more guides available for you to jump right into.
Examples
An NSO Local Install also comes with A LOT of examples of a variety of different types of ways you can use NSO. Many of these touch on advanced topics, but there are plenty of basic ones as well. Here is the high level directories of examples in ~/nso-6.0/examples.ncs
ls -l examples.ncs/
# Output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user staff 1.0K Nov 29 05:17 README
drwxr-xr-x 4 user staff 128B Nov 29 04:50 datacenter/
drwxr-xr-x 3 user staff 96B Nov 29 04:50 generic-ned/
drwxr-xr-x 4 user staff 128B Nov 29 04:50 getting-started/
drwxr-xr-x 7 user staff 224B Nov 29 04:50 service-provider/
drwxr-xr-x 3 user staff 96B Nov 29 04:50 snmp-ned/
drwxr-xr-x 11 user staff 352B Nov 29 05:17 snmp-notification-receiver/
drwxr-xr-x 5 user staff 160B Nov 29 04:50 web-server-farm/
NEDs or Network Element Drivers
In order to "talk to" the network, NSO uses NEDs as device drivers for different device types. Cisco has NEDs for hundreds of different devices available for customers, and several are included in the installer in the ~/nso-6.0/packages/neds
directory.
ls -l
# Output
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416B Nov 29 05:17 a10-acos-cli-3.0/
drwxr-xr-x 12 user staff 384B Nov 29 05:17 alu-sr-cli-3.4/
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416B Nov 29 05:17 cisco-asa-cli-6.6/
drwxr-xr-x 12 user staff 384B Nov 29 05:17 cisco-ios-cli-3.0/
drwxr-xr-x 12 user staff 384B Nov 29 05:17 cisco-ios-cli-3.8/
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416B Nov 29 05:17 cisco-iosxr-cli-3.0/
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416B Nov 29 05:17 cisco-iosxr-cli-3.5/
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416B Nov 29 05:17 cisco-nx-cli-3.0/
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416B Nov 29 05:17 dell-ftos-cli-3.0/
drwxr-xr-x 10 user staff 320B Nov 29 05:17 juniper-junos-nc-3.0/
Here you can see there are NEDs for Cisco ASA, IOS, IOS XR, and NX-OS. Also included are NEDs for other vendors including Juniper JunOS, A10, ALU and Dell.
Note: The NEDs included in the installer are intended for evaluation, demonstration, and use with the
examples.ncs
that are also included. These are not the latest versions available, and often don't have all the features available in production NEDs.
Installing New NED Versions
Cisco also makes additional versions of some NEDs available on DevNet for evaluation and non-production use. You can find them with the NSO downloads (scroll up!).
Note: the specific file names and versions you download maybe different from this guide. Update the paths appropriately.
Like the NSO installer, the NEDs are
signed.bin
files that need to be run to validate the download and extract the new code.First, find the downloaded files - change to the working directory where your downloads are:
Note: the filenames indicate which version of NSO the NEDs are pre-compiled for (in this case NSO 6.0), and the version of the NED.
cd ~/Downloads/
ls -l ncs*.bin
# Output
-rw-r--r--@ 1 user staff 9708091 Dec 18 12:05 ncs-6.0-cisco-asa-6.16-freetrial.signed.bin
-rw-r--r--@ 1 user staff 51233042 Dec 18 12:06 ncs-6.0-cisco-ios-6.88-freetrial.signed.bin
-rw-r--r--@ 1 user staff 39292052 Dec 18 12:06 ncs-6.0-cisco-iosxr-7.43-freetrial.signed.bin
-rw-r--r--@ 1 user staff 8400190 Dec 18 12:05 ncs-6.0-cisco-nx-5.23.6-freetrial.signed.bin
Use the
sh
command to "run" thesigned.bin
to verify the certificate and extract the NEDtar.gz
and other files.sh ncs-6.0-cisco-nx-5.23.6.signed.bin
Output
Unpacking... Verifying signature... Downloading CA certificate from http://www.cisco.com/security/pki/certs/crcam2.cer ... Successfully downloaded and verified crcam2.cer. Downloading SubCA certificate from http://www.cisco.com/security/pki/certs/innerspace.cer ... Successfully downloaded and verified innerspace.cer. Successfully verified root, subca and end-entity certificate chain. Successfully fetched a public key from tailf.cer. Successfully verified the signature of ncs-6.0-cisco-nx-5.23.6.tar.gz using tailf.cer
Repeat for all files
You now have 3 tarballs (.tar.gz) files. These are compressed versions of the NEDs.
ls -l ncs*.tar.gz
Output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user staff 9704896 Dec 12 21:11 ncs-6.0-cisco-asa-6.16.tar.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 user staff 51260488 Dec 13 22:58 ncs-6.0-cisco-ios-6.88.tar.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 user staff 39305257 Oct 7 17:47 ncs-6.0-cisco-iosxr-7.43.tar.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 user staff 8409288 Dec 18 09:09 ncs-6.0-cisco-nx-5.23.6.tar.gz
Navigate to the
packages/neds
directory for your local-install.cd ~/nso-6.0/packages/neds
While in
~/nso-6.0/packages/neds
directory, extract the tarballs into this directory using thetar
command with the path to where the compressed NED is located:Update the path and file name for the NED versions you downloaded
tar -zxvf ~/Downloads/ncs-6.0-cisco-nx-5.23.6.tar.g tar -zxvf ~/Downloads/ncs-6.0-cisco-ios-6.88.tar.gz tar -zxvf ~/Downloads/ncs-6.0-cisco-iosxr-7.43.tar.gz tar -zxvf ~/Downloads/ncs-6.0-17:47-6.16.tar.gz
Here is a sample list of the newer NEDs extracted along with the ones bundled with the installation:
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416 Nov 29 05:17 a10-acos-cli-3.0
drwxr-xr-x 12 user staff 384 Nov 29 05:17 alu-sr-cli-3.4
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416 Nov 29 05:17 cisco-asa-cli-6.6
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416 Dec 12 21:11 cisco-asa-cli-6.7
drwxr-xr-x 12 user staff 384 Nov 29 05:17 cisco-ios-cli-3.0
drwxr-xr-x 12 user staff 384 Nov 29 05:17 cisco-ios-cli-3.8
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416 Dec 13 22:58 cisco-ios-cli-6.42
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416 Nov 29 05:17 cisco-iosxr-cli-3.0
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416 Nov 29 05:17 cisco-iosxr-cli-3.5
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 448 Oct 7 14:46 cisco-iosxr-cli-7.4
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416 Nov 29 05:17 cisco-nx-cli-3.0
drwxr-xr-x 14 user staff 448 Dec 18 09:09 cisco-nx-cli-5.13
drwxr-xr-x 13 user staff 416 Nov 29 05:17 dell-ftos-cli-3.0
drwxr-xr-x 10 user staff 320 Nov 29 05:17 juniper-junos-nc-3.0
- And now you have the newer NED versions available, as well as the demo/evaluation versions included with NSO itself!
ncsrc
The last thing to note are the files ncsrc
and ncsrc.tsch
. These are shell scripts for bash and tsch that setup your PATH
and other environment variables for NSO. Depending on your shell, you will need source
this file before starting your NSO work.
# NOTE your path may be different, double check!
$ source $HOME/nso-6.0/ncsrc
Most users add source ~/nso-6.0/ncsrc
to their ~/.bash_profile
, but you can just do it manually when you want it. Once it has been "sourced" you have access to all the NSO executable commands - which start with ncs
ncs {TAB} {TAB}
# Output
ncs ncs-maapi ncs-project ncs-start-python-vm ncs_cmd ncs_load
ncs-backup ncs-make-package ncs-setup ncs-uninstall ncs_conf_tool ncsc
ncs-collect-tech-report ncs-netsim ncs-start-java-vm ncs_cli ncs_crypto_keys
Creating an Instance of NSO
A NSO Local Install unpacks and prepares your system to run NSO, but doesn't actually start it up. A Local Install allows the engineer to create an NSO "instance" tied to a project, which you have not done yet.
If you are familiar with Python, you can think of this like creating a Python virtual environment after installing Python. Within this NSO instance, you will have different inventory, configuration, and code.
Using ncs-setup to Create an NSO Instance
One of the included scripts with an NSO installation is ncs-setup
, which makes it very easy to create instances of NSO from a Local Install. You can look at the --help
for full details, but the two options we need to know are:
* --dest
defines the directory where you want to setup NSO (if the directory does not exist, it will be created)
* --package
defines the NEDs you want to this NSO instance to have installed. You can specify this option multiple times.
Note: NCS is the original name of the NSO product, so many the commands and application features will be prefaced with
ncs
. Think ofncs
as another name for NSO.
Go ahead and run this command to setup an NSO instance in the current directory with the IOS, NX-OS, IOS-XR and ASA NEDs, you only need one NED per platform that you want NSO to manage (even though you may have multiple versions in your installer
neds
directory).You will want to use the name of the NED folder in
${NCS_DIR}/packages/neds
for the latest NED version you've got installed for the target platform. You can usetab
complete after you start typing a path (or just copy and paste, though double check the NED version numbers below match what is currently on the sandbox to avoid a syntax error):ncs-setup --package ~/nso-6.0/packages/neds/cisco-ios-cli-6.44 \ --package ~/nso-6.0/packages/neds/cisco-nx-cli-5.15 \ --package ~/nso-6.0/packages/neds/cisco-iosxr-cli-7.20 \ --package ~/nso-6.0/packages/neds/cisco-asa-cli-6.8 \ --dest nso-instance
If you checkout the
nso-instance
directory now, you'll find several new files and folders have been created. This guide won't go through them all in detail now, but a couple are handy to know about.ncs.conf
is the NSO application configuration file. Used to customize aspects of the NSO instance (change ports, enable / disable features, etc.). The defaults are often perfect for projects like this.packages/
is the directory that has symlinks to the NEDs that we referenced in the--package
arguments at setup.logs/
is the directory that contains all the logs from NSO. This directory is useful when troubleshooting.
$ ls nso-instance/ logs ncs-cdb ncs.conf packages README.ncs scripts state $ ls -l nso-instance/packages/ total 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 user docker 51 Mar 19 12:44 cisco-asa-cli-6.8 -> /home/user/nso-6.0/packages/neds/cisco-asa-cli-6.8 lrwxrwxrwx 1 user docker 52 Mar 19 12:44 cisco-ios-cli-6.44 -> /home/user/nso-6.0/packages/neds/cisco-ios-cli-6.44 lrwxrwxrwx 1 user docker 54 Mar 19 12:44 cisco-iosxr-cli-7.20 -> /home/user/nso-6.0/packages/neds/cisco-iosxr-cli-7.20 lrwxrwxrwx 1 user docker 51 Mar 19 12:44 cisco-nx-cli-5.15 -> /home/user/nso-6.0/packages/neds/cisco-nx-cli-5.15 $
Now you need to "start" your NSO instance. Navigate to the
nso-instance
directory and type the commandncs
. It will take a few seconds to run, and you won't get any explicit output unless there is a problem.
Note: you need to be in the
nso-instance
directory each time you want to start or stop NSO. If you have multiple instances, you need to navigate to each one to use thencs
command to start or stop each one.
ncs
You can verify that NSO is running by using the
ncs --status | grep status
command, which has a large amount of information, so we usegrep
to just search for the status:$ ncs --status | grep status status: started db=running id=31 priority=1 path=/ncs:devices/device/live-status-protocol/device-type
Now you should add either some netsim devices (
ncs-netsim -h
) or lab devices to NSO and get automating!
Getting Started
We recommend that you start with the Getting Started guide online version or in the doc
directory $HOME/nso-VERSION/doc/pdf/nso_getting_started-VERSION.pdf
There are a lot of examples in the $HOME/nso-VERSION/examples.ncs
directory. The examples have a short description in the $HOME/nso-VERSION/examples.ncs/READMEfile. Each example has a
README` file that explains how to run it.
Sandboxes
If you do not want to download and install Cisco NSO, please check out the NSO Reservable Sandbox on DevNet. There is also an associated tutorial called Learn NSO the Easy Way.
Still Need help?
There is a lot of material on the NSO Developer Hub, where you also can ask questions about anything NSO-related.