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Quick Start

Quick Start

Get up and running with AVD CLI in minutes! This guide will walk you through generating your first network configuration.

Overview

In this quick start, you’ll:

  1. Set up a basic AVD inventory
  2. Generate configurations
  3. View generated outputs

Estimated time: 5-10 minutes

Step 1: Prepare Your Inventory

AVD CLI works with standard Ansible inventory structures. For this quick start, we’ll use a minimal example.

Create a directory structure:

mkdir -p my-network/group_vars
cd my-network

Create inventory.yml

# my-network/inventory.yml
all:
  children:
    FABRIC:
      children:
        SPINES:
          hosts:
            spine1:
            spine2:
        LEAFS:
          hosts:
            leaf1:
            leaf2:

Create group_vars/FABRIC.yml

# my-network/group_vars/FABRIC.yml
---
fabric_name: MY_FABRIC

design:
  type: l3ls-evpn

mgmt_gateway: 192.168.0.1
mgmt_interface_vrf: default

# Spine configuration
spine:
  defaults:
    platform: vEOS-lab
    loopback_ipv4_pool: 192.168.255.0/24
    bgp_as: 65001
  nodes:
    - name: spine1
      id: 1
      mgmt_ip: 192.168.0.10/24
    - name: spine2
      id: 2
      mgmt_ip: 192.168.0.11/24

# Leaf configuration
l3leaf:
  defaults:
    platform: vEOS-lab
    loopback_ipv4_pool: 192.168.254.0/24
    vtep_loopback_ipv4_pool: 192.168.253.0/24
    uplink_interfaces: [Ethernet1, Ethernet2]
    uplink_switches: [spine1, spine2]
    uplink_ipv4_pool: 172.31.255.0/24
    mlag_interfaces: [Ethernet3, Ethernet4]
    mlag_peer_ipv4_pool: 10.255.252.0/24
    mlag_peer_l3_ipv4_pool: 10.255.251.0/24
    spanning_tree_mode: mstp
    spanning_tree_priority: 4096
  node_groups:
    - group: RACK1
      bgp_as: 65100
      nodes:
        - name: leaf1
          id: 1
          mgmt_ip: 192.168.0.12/24
          uplink_switch_interfaces: [Ethernet1, Ethernet1]
        - name: leaf2
          id: 2
          mgmt_ip: 192.168.0.13/24
          uplink_switch_interfaces: [Ethernet2, Ethernet2]

Step 2: Generate Configurations

Now generate the configurations using AVD CLI:

avd-cli generate all \
  --inventory-path . \
  --output-path output \
  --workflow eos-design

Using Environment Variables

You can also set environment variables to avoid repeating options: 

export AVD_CLI_INVENTORY_PATH=.
export AVD_CLI_OUTPUT_PATH=output
export AVD_CLI_WORKFLOW=eos-design

avd-cli generate all

Expected Output

→ Loading inventory...
✓ Loaded 4 devices
→ Generating configurations, documentation, and tests...
→ Processing fabric: MY_FABRIC
  → Generating AVD facts...
  → Generating structured configs...
  → Generating device configurations...
  → Generating documentation...

✓ Generation complete!
                      Generated Files
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Category       ┃ Count ┃ Output Path                 ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Configurations │     4 │ output/configs              │
│ Documentation  │     4 │ output/documentation        │
└────────────────┴───────┴─────────────────────────────┘

Step 3: Explore Generated Files

Check the output directory:

tree output/

output/
├── configs/
│   ├── leaf1.cfg
│   ├── leaf2.cfg
│   ├── spine1.cfg
│   └── spine2.cfg
└── documentation/
    ├── devices/
    │   ├── leaf1.md
    │   ├── leaf2.md
    │   ├── spine1.md
    │   └── spine2.md
    └── fabric/
        └── MY_FABRIC-documentation.md

View a Configuration

cat output/configs/spine1.cfg

You’ll see a complete EOS configuration with:

  • Management interface configuration
  • BGP underlay configuration
  • EVPN overlay configuration
  • And more!

Step 4: View Inventory Information

Get detailed information about your inventory:

avd-cli info --inventory-path .

Output:

→ Loading inventory...
✓ Loaded 4 devices

           Inventory Summary
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Metric                  ┃ Value     ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Total Devices           │ 4         │
│ Total Fabrics           │ 1         │
│ Fabric: MY_FABRIC       │           │
│   - Design Type         │ l3ls-evpn │
│   - Spine Devices       │ 2         │
│   - Leaf Devices        │ 2         │
└─────────────────────────┴───────────┘

                        Devices
┏━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Hostname ┃ Type  ┃ Platform  ┃ Management IP ┃ Fabric    ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ spine1   │ spine │ vEOS-lab  │ 192.168.0.10  │ MY_FABRIC │
│ spine2   │ spine │ vEOS-lab  │ 192.168.0.11  │ MY_FABRIC │
│ leaf1    │ leaf  │ vEOS-lab  │ 192.168.0.12  │ MY_FABRIC │
│ leaf2    │ leaf  │ vEOS-lab  │ 192.168.0.13  │ MY_FABRIC │
└──────────┴───────┴───────────┴───────────────┴───────────┘

Step 5: Deploy Configurations (Optional)

Once you’ve generated configurations, you can deploy them to your EOS devices using the deploy command.

Prerequisites

  • Devices must be reachable on the network
  • eAPI must be enabled on devices
  • Valid credentials in inventory (ansible_user, ansible_password)

Dry-Run Deployment

First, validate your configurations with a dry-run:

avd-cli deploy eos --inventory-path . --dry-run --diff

Output:

Deployment Plan (dry-run)
  Mode: replace
  Targets: 4 devices
  Concurrency: 10 devices
  Credentials: admin / ********

⠼ Deploying to 4 devices...

                      Deployment Status
┏━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ Hostname ┃ Status  ┃ Duration ┃ Diff (+/-) ┃ Error ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ spine1   │ success │ 2.34s    │ +127 / -5  │       │
│ spine2   │ success │ 1.89s    │ +127 / -5  │       │
│ leaf1    │ success │ 3.12s    │ +245 / -12 │       │
│ leaf2    │ success │ 2.87s    │ +245 / -12 │       │
└──────────┴─────────┴──────────┴────────────┴───────┘

Summary:
  ✓ Success: 4
  ✗ Failed: 0
  ○ Skipped: 0

The Diff (±) column shows: - Green numbers (+127): Lines added to the configuration - Red numbers (-5): Lines removed from the configuration

Live Deployment

After validating, deploy to live devices:

avd-cli deploy eos --inventory-path .

Deployment Best Practices

  • Always run --dry-run first to validate changes
  • Use --diff to review configuration changes
  • Deploy incrementally: -l SPINES, -l "spine*", or -l spine-01
  • Enable SSL verification in production: --verify-ssl

For more information, see the Deploy Command Guide.

Next Steps

Congratulations! You’ve successfully generated and optionally deployed your first network configuration with AVD CLI. 🎉

Learn More

Customize Your Network

Now you can customize your network by:

  1. Adding more devices to your inventory
  2. Configuring VLANs, SVIs, and network services
  3. Defining port channels and MLAG
  4. Setting up tenant networks
  5. Configuring network services (VXLAN, EVPN, etc.)

Refer to the Arista AVD documentation for detailed configuration options.

Common Next Commands

# Generate only configurations
avd-cli generate configs -i . -o output

# Generate only documentation
avd-cli generate docs -i . -o output

# Deploy configurations with dry-run
avd-cli deploy eos -i . --dry-run --diff

# Deploy to specific group
avd-cli deploy eos -i . -l SPINES

# Deploy to devices matching pattern
avd-cli deploy eos -i . -l "spine*"

# Deploy to specific devices
avd-cli deploy eos -i . -l spine-01 -l spine-02

# Validate inventory before generating
avd-cli validate -i .

# Use different workflow (for existing structured configs)
avd-cli generate all -i . -o output --workflow cli-config

Questions?

  • Check the FAQ for common questions
  • Join the Arista AVD community
  • Open an issue on GitHub