arista-evpn-vxlan-clab/scripts

scripts/generate_weathermap.py

Generates a weathermap-ng panel from live IPFabric topology + gnmic/Prometheus metrics, and writes a full Grafana dashboard-as-code JSON to configs/grafana/weathermap-dashboard.json (committed to Gitea as the source of truth, same pattern as the retired Flow Panel YAML). Optionally provisions it into Grafana via the HTTP API.

See issue #48 for the panel schema research this is built against, and its comment thread for the live-validation history (auth quirks, plugin id, a PromQL escaping bug, a panel-crash fix — worth reading before touching the anchor/regex-escaping logic).

Usage

export IPFABRIC_URL=https://<ipfabric-instance>
export IPFABRIC_TOKEN=<token>
python3 scripts/generate_weathermap.py                 # writes the JSON only

export GRAFANA_URL=https://<external-grafana-instance>
export GRAFANA_TOKEN=<token>
export GRAFANA_DATASOURCE_UID=<prometheus-datasource-uid-in-grafana>
python3 scripts/generate_weathermap.py --provision      # also provisions via the Grafana API

Re-run after any topology change (evpn-lab.clab.yml) to regenerate and re-provision.

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Default	Notes
IPFABRIC_URL	yes	—	e.g. https://ipfabric.example.com
IPFABRIC_TOKEN	yes	—	Inventory/Snapshots read access. Sent as X-API-Token, not Authorization: Bearer — IPFabric's REST API does not use bearer auth.
IPFABRIC_SNAPSHOT	no	$last
PROMETHEUS_URL	no	http://172.16.0.71:9090	The in-topology Prometheus (see #45), used at generation time to validate the IPFabric→gnmic interface alias and to discover live VTEP/VLAN pairs. This does not have to be the same instance Grafana queries at render time — see below.
GRAFANA_URL	with --provision	—
GRAFANA_TOKEN	with --provision	—	Grafana Service Account token, sent as Authorization: Bearer.
GRAFANA_DATASOURCE_UID	with --provision	—	UID of the Prometheus datasource in Grafana that will actually back the panel. This must be a datasource that can see the gnmic metrics — an unrelated/external Prometheus instance with no gnmic data will make the panel render with no values (this happened once, see #48).
GRAFANA_DASHBOARD_UID	no	evpn-vxlan-fabric-weathermap
GRAFANA_WEATHERMAP_PLUGIN_ID	no	tamirsuliman-weathermap-panel	The installed weathermap-ng plugin id. Override if a different fork is installed — plugin ids don't always match the upstream repo name (the schema research in #48 was done against the allamiro fork's source; what's actually installed here is a different fork with a stricter/different runtime schema — see the ANCHOR handling in the script).

What the script does

1. Fetches device inventory + connectivity-matrix from IPFabric.
2. Filters the connectivity-matrix to physical Ethernet-to-Ethernet links only: drops Management-plane neighbor entries and .100/.200 subinterface rows (802.1Q tags used for the gold VRF stitching on Core — they ride the same physical port as their parent interface and gnmic only exports physical interface counters), and dedupes the two directions IPFabric reports for each physical link into one.
3. Computes node positions as a simple site-grouped grid (dc/core/campus bands) — IPFabric has no layout data.
4. Builds the panel's targets: one PromQL query per metric family (BGP status, interface tx, interface rx, VXLAN MAC/VNI), each with an explicit legendFormat so the resolved display name is predictable.
5. Builds nodes[] and links[] referencing those resolved legend strings, including the plugin's anchors tally (per-node count of link attachments per side) and numeric anchor enum on each link side — omitting these crashes the panel on load in the installed plugin fork, despite the (fork-specific) schema research saying it's safe to skip.
6. Cross-checks every IPFabric interface name, aliased to gnmic's naming (Et→Ethernet, Po→Port-Channel, Lo→Loopback, Vl→Vlan, Ma→Management), against the live exporter. Any link whose aliased name has no matching series is logged, not silently dropped — the actual fix for a real mismatch belongs in gnmic interface aliasing (#43), not in this script.
7. Writes the dashboard JSON, and provisions it via POST /api/dashboards/db if --provision is passed.

Known gaps

• VXLAN MAC-per-VNI target: the vlan join key used to correlate VLAN→VNI mapping with FDB entries (query verbatim from #44) doesn't actually match on live data for any VTEP node — likely an Arista internal-VLAN-vs-front-panel-VLAN translation the OpenConfig paths don't reconcile. Only affects the decorative per-VTEP tooltip metric, not node/link status or traffic coloring. Tracked in #44, not fixed here.