Cisco pyATS Network Test and Automation Solution: Data-driven and reusable testing for modern networks

Chapter 3

Testbeds

A fundamental and foundational part of pyATS is the testbed. Testbeds can be, and often are, structured text stored in a YAML file, but they can also be dynamically created at pyATS job runtime. Other structured text formats such as XML and JSON can be used, but the traditional format for most testbed automation frameworks such as pyATS and XPRESSO is YAML. Testbeds describe the topology, devices, and even intent, and they abstract the complexity of connecting to our devices using Python. With nothing more than a simple testbed.yaml file and pyATS installed in a virtual Python environment network, engineers can use the pyATS command-line interface (CLI) to interact with the devices and topology within the testbed. In this ...