On-Box Network Automation IOS-XE: Guestshell IOx

What is on-box automation/Programmability?At its core on-programmability refers to performing automation via the network device(e.g switch or router) as opposed performing automation deployment from an external node(e.g windows/Linux pc/laptop etc) 🧂The programmability GuestShell(IOx) inside IOS-XE is a container, it has no awareness of its underlying infrastructure. It’s a Linux CentOS container and it needs to…

Taha Yusuf

29th Oct 2023

1–2 minutes

What is on-box automation/Programmability?
At its core on-programmability refers to performing automation via the network device(e.g switch or router) as opposed performing automation deployment from an external node(e.g windows/Linux pc/laptop etc)

🧂The programmability GuestShell(IOx) inside IOS-XE is a container, it has no awareness of its underlying infrastructure. It’s a Linux CentOS container and it needs to be routed.

🎩The IOSXE interfaces needs be configured as shown in my diagram so that it has reachability to the underlay network infrastructure. The GuestShell uses VPG as source interface to connect to the outside network.

🕵️The CentOS provide all the tools required for programmability and automation.

Illustration of routing and Guest-shell programmability toolkit IOS-XE

🕶This is really useful and has many use cases:

✴️low latency cloud native application hosting on the edge.

✴️Automating an Air Gapped network

✴️Running network diagnostic tools such as wireshark on IOS-XE and NX-OS network devices

✴️Running complex python scripts that interact with Cli via API using exclusive python modules such as *cli and Cisco module

✴️unlocking full Linux capabilities on IOSXE and NX-OS network devices

…and many more.
The following diagram illustrate how to route the IOSXE Guestshell to provide reachability and the capabilities provided by the CentOS container.