Using Netmiko and Napalm Extras

[jeffkala]

Being able to manipulate connection settings for grabbing backup configs is required in certain scenarios. Few examples:

1. Slow responding device (old).
2. Large configs that may cause the backup to fail as the prompt is never found.

By default the golden config plugin has a shim plugin nautobot-plugin-nornir that offers the flexibility to change the connection options globally or by using config-context which offers a greater flexibility on a per device, role, platform etc. level.

Simple examples of how to do it globally:

PLUGINS_CONFIG = {
    "nautobot_plugin_nornir": {
        # Optionally set global connection options.
        "connection_options": {
                "napalm": {
                        "extras": {
                                "optional_args": {
                                "global_delay_factor": 1,
                            },
                    },
                },
                "netmiko": {
                        "extras": {
                                "fast_cli": False
                  },
              },
        }
    }
}

If you'd like to use config-context without any defaults you would simply toggle the feature on in the PLUGIN_CONFIG

PLUGINS_CONFIG = {
    "nautobot_plugin_nornir": {
        "use_config_context": {"connection_options": True},
      }
}

You can then have each of the connection_option settings per nornir extras path defined in config-context of your choice. More information provided in the docs.
https://docs.nautobot.com/projects/plugin-nornir/en/latest/user/app_feature_inventory/