Building AVD Environment

$ id -P "$USER" | awk -F: '{print "Author: " $1 ", " $8}'
Author: pa, Petr Ankudinov
#        └─ @arista.com

$ date +"%b %Y"
Aug 2025

AVD Installation Options

# ansible-core will be installed as PyAVD requirement
pip install "pyavd[ansible]"
ansible-galaxy collection install arista.avd
# install community.general to support callback plugins, etc.
ansible-galaxy collection install community.general

How to Cook AVD Inventory

• Be structured.
• Craft your environment and confirm that it works with some basic test.
• Create a minimalistic inventory and generate first configs.
• Grow your environment slowly, keep it clean and easy to read. Avoid workarounds.
• When required - step back to the last working setup
• Iterate
• Cloning existing repo and adjusting to the new setup is not always a good idea.
  • Make sure that you understand every single knob in the cloned inventory

AVD Repository Building Blocks

• Environment
• ansible.cfg
• inventory
• variables
• playbooks
• life quality improvements
  • shortcuts
  • useful hacks

Keep Your AVD Environment Clean

• NEVER use "handcrafted" installation direclty on your machine. It will break! Troubleshooting that is wasted time. →
• NEVER use root account!
• Feasible options:
  • Dedicated and well maintained VM
  • Virtual environment
  • Containers
    • AVD container images are in preview: fully functional, but breaking changes can happen any time
    • No Arista TAC support possible for customers who ordered AVD support
  • AnsibleEEs
    • This one is for RedHat support

Virtual Environment vs Containers

Start AVD Environment in CLI

• Check available AVD images

• AVD container images are in preview

• Set alias:

  # use ~/.bashrc if ZSH is not installed
  echo 'alias avd="docker run --rm -it -v avd-playground:/home/avd/playground -w /home/avd/playground ghcr.io/aristanetworks/avd/universal:python3.11-avd-v5.5.1"' >> ~/.zshrc
  # copy an example
  cp -r /home/avd/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/arista/avd/examples/<example-name>/* .
  

• Start AVD container in interactive mode:

  avd
  

• Check installed Ansible collections:

  avd ➜ ~ $ ansible-galaxy collection list | grep avd
  # /home/avd/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections
  arista.avd        5.5.1
  

• You can exit container any time with exit command

To start fresh delete the volume: docker volume rm avd-playground

Create AVD Environment in VSCode

• To simplify your life open AVD environment in a dev container using VSCode
• Use the following snippet in your terminal:

# create devcontainer.json
mkdir -p avd-playground/.devcontainer
cat <<EOF > avd-playground/.devcontainer/devcontainer.json
{
    "image": "ghcr.io/aristanetworks/avd/universal:python3.11-avd-v5.5.1",
    "remoteUser": "avd",
    "onCreateCommand": "mkdir -p /home/avd/playground",
    "workspaceFolder": "/home/avd/playground",
    "workspaceMount": "source=avd-playground,target=/home/avd/playground,type=volume"
}
EOF
# start the AVD environment in VSCode
cd avd-playground
code .

• Click Reopen in Container button or use VSCode command pallete to find Dev Container: Reopen in Container

if code . not working, open VSCode command pallete and find and use "Install code command in the PATH"

Keep Your ansible.cfg Small

[defaults]
inventory = inventory.yml
jinja2_extensions =  jinja2.ext.loopcontrols,jinja2.ext.do,jinja2.ext.i18n

WARNING: If you need longer ansible.cfg - your environment is likely suboptimal.

• Avoid custom collection path, etc. when you don't need it.
• Avoid any kind of relative path, like ../..
• Test your installation and .cfg on different machines and make sure it works.

Environment Troubleshooting Cheatsheet

# Ansible collection setup
ansible --version
# check collections versions and install location
ansible-galaxy collection list
which ansible
# requirements
pip3 freeze
python3.XX -m pip freeze # may not be the same
# and where to find them
pip --version
python3 -c "import ansible as _; print(_.__file__)"
# python
python3 --version
which python
which python3
which python3.XX
python3.11 -c "import sys;print(sys.path)"
# user
whoami
id -u
id -g
echo ${HOME}
# check the PATH
echo ${PATH}

Credits and Attributions

• Slides are created in Marp by Yuki Hattori
• Check Marp awesome list and build your next slide deck in Marp!
• Most images are from Pexels
• VSCode remote development picture is taken from code.visualstudio.com
• iFrame was relying on Coder

THE END

• Ansible AVD
• This repository

- One more slide!
+ No more slides.

git commit -m "The END!"