Juniper Networks vMX lwaftr Docker Container

The vmx-docker-lwaftr Docker Container contains everything thats required to successfully launch vMX 16.1R3 and newer images with a configuration file and license key. This document describes how that Container can be built from source. The actual vMX images is NOT part of the Container. It will be loaded from the official vMX tar file placed in the local directory from where the Container is launched.

Consult the Juniper White Paper on vMX Lightweight 4over6 Virtual Network Function for a solution overview and listen to the podcast on Software Gone Wild by Ivan Pepelnjak, Dec 2016: Blog, MP3.

Build instructions

The Container vmx-docker-lwaftr is based on the official Ubuntu Docker 14.04.5 base Container and includes the following elements:

• Qemu 2.4.1 with reconnect patch downloaded and built from source in qemu/
• Snabb, downloaded and built from source in snabb/
• JET Python Client Library

The build process requires a Docker Engine and the make tool. Please follow the official
Install Docker Engine on Linux guide. Docker engine 1.12.1
or newer is required to run the lwaftr1 simulation in the tests directory.

The Qemu patch used to build Qemu comes from https://github.com/snabbco/snabb/pull/332.

Clone the repo with submodules:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/Juniper/vmx-docker-lwaftr

Or to clone a specific version by tag, use git option ‘-b’ to specify a specific tag:

git clone --recursive -b v1.1.19 https://github.com/juniper/vmx-docker-lwaftr

A single top level execution of make will build Snabb, Qemu and, dumb-init with a temporary build container and create the vmx-docker-lwaftr Docker container plus the b4cpe client simulator container.

make

The name and version of the Container can be found the toplevel file VERSION:

$ cat VERSION
vmx-docker-lwaftr:v1.2.0

$ mwiget@st:~/vmx-docker-lwaftr$ docker images
REPOSITORY              TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED              SIZE
vmx-docker-lwaftr       v1.2.0               2779b5c29172        About a minute ago   253.2 MB
buildqemu               latest              dfcbe71b7896        2 minutes ago        432.5 MB
buildsnabb              latest              60f090d9d3e0        4 minutes ago        344.7 MB
build-dumb-init         latest              866eb14689e5        6 minutes ago        347.8 MB
b4cpe                   v0.1                fb4f557e6249        3 days ago           258.6 MB
ubuntu                  14.04.4             38c759202e30        10 weeks ago         196.6 MB
...

The image build be removed via ‘make clean’ from the qemu, respectively snabb directory. Only the ‘vmx-docker-lwaftr’ Container is required.

5. Save vmx-docker-lwaftr Container to file

To save the vmx-docker-lwaftr Container into an image file use:

$ docker save -o vmx-docker-lwaftr-v1.2.0.img vmx-docker-lwaftr:v1.2.0
$ ls -l vmx-docker-lwaftr-v1.2.0.img
-rw------- 1 mwiget staff 262911488 Sep  11 21:40 vmx-docker-lwaftr-v1.2.0.img

Running the vmx-docker-lwaftr Container

docker run --name <name> --rm -v \$PWD:/u:ro \\
   --privileged -i -t marcelwiget/vmx-docker-lwaftr[:version] \\
   -c <junos_config_file> -I identity [-l license_file]\\
   [-V <# of cores>] [-W <# of cores>] [-P <cores>] [-R <cores>] \\
   [-m <kbytes>] [-M <kBytes>] \\
   <image> <pci-address/core> [<pci-address/core> ...]

[:version]       Container version. Defaults to :latest

 -v \$PWD:/u:ro   Required to access a file in the current directory
                 docker is executed from (ro forces read-only access)
                 The file will be copied from this location

 <image>         vMX distribution tar file, e.g. vmx-bundle-16.1R3.10.tgz

 <pci-address/core> [<pci-address/core> ..]
                 One or more PCI addresses and physical core to lock
                 the Snabb process to. For simulation purposes use
                 'tap' instead of the pci-address. 

 -I  username,password for the JETapp to communicate with the Junos
     control plane or ssh private key file. Must also be configured in 
     the Junos config with super-user privileges

 -c  Junos configuration file

 -l  Junos license key file

 -m  Specify the amount of memory for the vRE/VCP (default $VCPMEM kB)
 -M  Specify the amount of memory for the vPFE/VFP (default $VFPMEM kB)

 -P  Cores to pin the VFP to via numactl --physcpubind <cores>
 -R  Cores to pin the VCP to via numactl --physcpubind <cores>
 
 -V  number of virtual cores to assign to VCP (default 1)
 -W  number of virtual cores to assign to VFP (default 3)

 -d  launch debug shell before launching vMX and before existing the container

See tests/run0.sh, tests/run1.sh and tests/run2.sh for examples on how to launch. The
vMX distribution tar file must be on the local directory from which the container
is launched.