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{ "lCode": "en_US", "lName": "English", "folder": "en_US" }
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Configuration Designer Overview

date_range 18-Jun-18

Configuration Designer, Resource Designer, and Network Service Designer are visual designer tools used by the Juniper Networks Contrail Service Orchestration (CSO) for smooth onboarding. The tools offer network designers a convenient way of bringing virtualized network functions (VNFs) from Juniper Networks and third-party companies into the network services catalog using a graphical user interface (GUI).

Configuration Designer provides an intuitive UI-based workflow for creating and managing configuration templates. These templates are rendered automatically in a GUI format that can be used as is by Resource Designer. Resource Designer uses these templates to create VNF packages that are then published to Network Service Designer.

Network Service Designer uses the VNF packages to design customized network services that are published to the network services catalog. The network services catalog contains a list of usable network services. Service provider administrators access the network services catalog to assign a set of network services to their customers using the Administration Portal. Finally, customer administrators access the network services assigned to them using a Customer Portal to manage their sites and services. Figure 1 shows a Configuration Designer and its workflow.

Figure 1: Configuration Designer Workflow
Configuration
Designer Workflow

Configuration Designer creates templates based on a simple concept of configuration parameterization. Parameterization facilitates the creation of versatile configuration templates that can be easily used for different configurations. It provides variables and parameters that you can substitute with actual values. For example, if you were to deploy an instance of a non-parmeterized template—with fixed IP addresses specified for a network interface—in a second deployment you would have to delete the first instance or it would lead to an error. However, in a parameterized template you would simply specify the required values for the provided parameters.

A configuration template has prepopulated values for configuration settings associated with a virtualized network function (VNF).The configuration in the templates can be of the following types:

  • Device-level base configurations, such as an interface configuration

  • Service configurations, such as a firewall policy configuration

  • Monitoring configurations, such as a CLI, SNMP, or other monitoring command configuration

In Configuration Designer, you can manually type a working configuration or copy and paste an existing golden configuration from your device. You can also use your own data model to configure your template. Once created, the templates are listed on a Design page, where you can review them at a glance. You can also modify the parameters and values of your templates as needed from the Design page.

The configuration templates can be used by:

  • Network designers to create a day 0 configuration or default parameters in the Resource Designer. For example, they can enter interface information.

  • Your customer administrators or end users (using the Customer Portal):

    • On Day 1 they can customize their services during VNF instantiation. For example, they can enter IP addresses for a given site.

    • On Day 2 they can update a configuration of existing instances. For example, they can configure their network to block social media.

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