README v1.0.2 2026-03-26
Table of contents
1. General
1.1 Extract the NED package
1.2 Install the NED package
1.2.1 Local install
1.2.2 System install
1.3 Configure the NED in NSO
2. Optional debug and trace setup
3. Dependencies
4. Sample device configuration
5. Built in live-status actions
6. Built in live-status show
7. Limitations
8. How to report NED issues and feature requests
9. How to rebuild a NED1. General
This document describes the helm-k8s NED.
The helm-k8s NED is used to target a host that manages helm (helm manager for the k8s cluster). Although the NED is generic as a NED type, the connection to the device is ssh-based. This means that the NED expects to connect over ssh to a host that is used as k8s manager using helm.
The NED configuration is composed of two main parts: - charts part - this is a list containing the information for all onboarded charts on the targeted helm host - deployments part - this is a list containing charts deployment.
When creating a deployment from a specific chart, the NED (and helm) will inherit the default values from the targeted chart. Chart values can be further customised in the NED configuration using the yang model (please check Configuration samples chapter for details).
Note that chart creation or deletion is not allowed in the helm-k8s NED, as they are deemed out of the scope of the NED. Only deployments creation/deletion/updates is allowed.
Before commiting changes (eg install deployments), it is possible to do a helm dry-run of the change, by running the following command from the NED:
NOTE: since the dry-run needs to execute the helm dry-run on the target host, before using the above command, a connect needs to be executed before the dry-run command.
Additional README files bundled with this NED package
Common NED Features
Verified target systems
1.1 Extract the NED package
It is assumed the NED package ncs-<NSO version>-helm-k8s-<NED version>.signed.bin has already been downloaded from software.cisco.com.
In this instruction the following example settings will be used:
NSO version: 6.0
NED version: 1.0.1
NED package downloaded to: /tmp/ned-package-store
Extract the NED package and verify its signature:
In case the signature can not be verified (for instance if no internet connection), do as below instead:
The result of the extraction shall be a tar.gz file with the same name as the .bin file:
1.2 Install the NED package
There are two alternative ways to install this NED package. Which one to use depends on how NSO itself is setup.
In the instructions below the following example settings will be used:
NSO version: 6.0
NED version: 1.0.1
NED download directory: /tmp/ned-package-store
NSO run time directory: ~/nso-lab-rundir
A prerequisite is to set the environment variable NSO_RUNDIR to point at the NSO run time directory:
1.2.1 Local install
This section describes how to install a NED package on a locally installed NSO (see "NSO Local Install" in the NSO Installation guide).
It is assumed the NED package has been been unpacked to a tar.gz file as described in 1.1.
Untar the tar.gz file. This creates a new sub-directory named:
helm-k8s-<NED major digit>.<NED minor digit>:Install the NED into NSO, using the ncs-setup tool:
Open a NSO CLI session and load the new NED package like below:
Alternatively the tar.gz file can be installed directly into NSO. Then skip steps 1 and 2 and do like below instead:
Set the environment variable NED_ROOT_DIR to point at the NSO NED package:
1.2.2 System install
This section describes how to install a NED package on a system installed NSO (see "NSO System Install" in the NSO Installation Guide).
It is assumed the NED package has been been unpacked to a tar.gz file as described in 1.1.
Do a NSO backup before installing the new NED package:
Start a NSO CLI session and fetch the NED package:
Install the NED package (add the argument replace-existing if a previous version has been loaded):
Load the NED package
1.3 Configure the NED in NSO
This section describes the steps for configuring a device instance using the newly installed NED package.
Start a NSO CLI session:
Enter configuration mode:
Configure a new authentication group (my-group) to be used for this device:
Configure a new device instance (example: dev-1):
Finally commit the configuration
Verify configuration, using a sync-from.
If the sync-from was not successful, check the NED configuration again.
2. Optional debug and trace setup
It is often desirable to see details from when and how the NED interacts with the device(Example: troubleshooting)
This can be achieved by configuring NSO to generate a trace file for the NED. A trace file contains information about all interactions with the device. Messages sent and received as well as debug printouts, depending on the log level configured.
NSO creates one separate trace file for each device instance with tracing enabled. Stored in the following location:
$NSO_RUNDIR/logs/ned-helm-k8s-gen-1.0-<device name>.trace
Do as follows to enable tracing in one specific device instance in NSO:
Start a NSO CLI session:
Enter configuration mode:
Enable trace raw:
Alternatively, tracing can be enabled globally affecting all configured device instances:
Configure the log level for printouts to the trace file:
Alternatively the log level can be set globally affecting all configured device instances using this NED package.
The log level 'info' is used by default and the 'debug' level is the most verbose.
IMPORTANT: Tracing shall be used with caution. This feature does increase the number of IPC messages sent between the NED and NSO. In some cases this can affect the performance in NSO. Hence, tracing should normally be disabled in production systems.
An alternative method for generating printouts from the NED is to enable the Java logging mechanism. This makes the NED print log messages to common NSO Java log file.
$NSO_RUNDIR/logs/ncs-java-vm.log
Do as follows to enable Java logging in the NED
Start a NSO CLI session:
Enter configuration mode:
Enable Java logging with level all from the NED package:
Configure the NED to log to the Java logger
Alternatively Java logging can be enabled globally affecting all configured device instances using this NED package.
IMPORTANT: Java logging does not use any IPC messages sent to NSO. Consequently, NSO performance is not affected. However, all log printouts from all log enabled devices are saved in one single file. This means that the usability is limited. Typically single device use cases etc.
3. Dependencies
This NED has the following host environment dependencies:
Java 1.8 (NSO version < 6.2)
Java 17 (NSO version >= 6.2)
Gnu Sed
Dependencies for NED recompile:
Apache Ant
Bash
Gnu Sort
Gnu awk
Grep
Python3 (with packages: re, sys, getopt, subprocess, argparse, os, glob)
4. Sample device configuration
The following steps present a demo of the helm-k8s NED. It includes all the steps to run this demo on a NSO setup, targetting a host that it is used to manage a Kubernetes cluster using helm.
Requirements for this demo: 1. a host that runs a NSO setup, having helm-k8s NED installed 2. a host that has helm installed 3. custom charts that are used during this demo. 4. create deployments
Step number 1
Please follow this README.md previous chapter in order to download, install and configure the helm-k8s NED. Regarding the configuration, this NED only needs the IP address, port and credentials set up for the targeted helm host (presented in step 2). NOTE: the connection between NSO and the helm host is SSH-based, so host keys needs to be fetched in NSO.
Step number 2
The targeted host needs to have helm installed and helm needs to be properly set up with the Kubernetes cluster. Setting up helm with the targeted kubernetes cluster is outside of the scope of this readme, so please consult external documentation for this. NOTE: helm-k8s NED requires that helm host have 'yq' tool installed. To check if yq tool is installed:
If yq is not installed, install yq - this step depends on the linux distribution. If the targeted host does not have internet access, the pre-compiled binary of yq can be downloaded from https://github.com/mikefarah/yq/releases.
Step number 3
Conceptually, helm-k8s NED works with two resources: charts and deployments. The charts are the blueprints used for Kubernetes cluster deployments. They represent the recipes that can be deployed on the Kubernetes cluster. The deployments represents instantiations of charts on the Kubernetes cluster (eg helm install ...). A deployment inherits the values of a chart, on top of which the user can define custom values.
In the scope of this demo, we are going to use two dummy charts: https://lpanduru.github.io/charts/
To add the charts using the helm-k8s NED, run the following commands from the NED:
Note: the above command will pull ned-charts repo in helm, containing two dummy charts called app1 and app2. For a real use-case scenario, valid charts should be fetched either from public known repos or from custom-defined repos.
ATENTION: Defining the custom charts (eg charts creatiion from the NED) is currently outside the scope of the current NED implementation.
Once we have some charts in helm, do a sync-from:
All the helm charts will be pulled by the NED and stored in /helm/chart yang node. As mentioned above, current NED implementation does not allow new chart creation.
Step 4
If the helm host have deployments available, the NED will pull the information for the available deployments and store them in /helm/deployment:
To create a new deployment (eg helm install command), we create a new entry in the /helm/deployment list, starting from an existing chart and providing mandatory values, like namespace, chart version etc:
Note: the new deployment 'test2' will inherit all the values of 'ned-charts/app1' chart from version 0.1.0. On top of the default values, the user can customize existing or new values using 'values key-value' list of custom values. In the above example, 'autoscaling.maxReplicas' is set to 10 instead of the default 5.
The new deployment can be tested if it is correct before deployment using 'commit dry-run outformat native' command:
In the current NED implementation, the /helm/deployment have a leaf 'status' that represents the status of the deployment, but this leaf is not coherent with the 'device' value unless a sync-from is performed after commit. If this value is needed for service processing, the NED will need live-status data implementation for status leaf.
5. Built in live-status actions
All helm CLI commands can be executed using NED live-status RPC actions. An example of RPC call to list available repositories in helm is the following:
Note that using the live-status exec helm , any helm command can be executed from the NED.
6. Built in live-status show
The helm-k9s NED does not support live-status TTL-based data
7. Limitations
Chart creation or deletion is not allowed in the helm-k8s NED, as they are deemed out of the scope of the NED.
8. How to report NED issues and feature requests
Issues like bugs and errors shall always be reported to the Cisco NSO NED team through the Cisco Support channel:
The following information is required for the Cisco NSO NED team to be able to investigate an issue:
Do as follows to gather the necessary information needed for your device, here named 'dev-1':
Enable full debug logging in the NED
Configure the NSO to generate a raw trace file from the NED
If the NED already had trace enabled, clear it in order to submit only relevant information
Do as follows for NSO 6.4 or newer:
Do as follows for older NSO versions:
Run a compare-config to populate the trace with initial device config
Reproduce the found issue using ncs_cli or your NSO service. Write down each necessary step in a reproduction report.
Gather the reproduction report and a copy of the raw trace file containing data recorded when the issue happened.
Contact the Cisco support and request to open a case. Provide the gathered files together with access details for a device that can be used by the Cisco NSO NED when investigating the issue.
Requests for new features and extensions of the NED are handled by the Cisco NSO NED team when applicable. Such requests shall also go through the Cisco support channel.
The following information is required for feature requests and extensions:
A detailed use case description, with details like:
Data of interest
The kind of operations to be used on the data. Like: 'read', 'create', 'update', 'delete' and the order of the operation
Device APIs involved in the operations (For example: REST URLs and payloads)
Device documentation describing the operations involved
Run sync-from # devices device dev-1 sync-from (if relevant)
Attach the raw trace to the ticket (if relevant)
Access to a device that can be used by the Cisco NSO NED team for testing and verification of the new feature. This usually means that both read and write permissions are required. Pseudo access via tools like Webex, Zoom etc is not acceptable. However, it is ok with access through VPNs, jump servers etc.
9. How to rebuild a NED
To rebuild the NED do as follows:
When the NED has been successfully rebuilt, it is necessary to reload the package into NSO.
Last updated
Was this helpful?