ALPINE - SONiC Switchstack Simulation - Sonika Jindal & Bhagat Janarthanan, Google#

Sonika Jindal and Bhagat Janarthanan, Software Engineers, Google

• Why: Pre-production fabric testing at scale is expensive; Google open-sourcing a Kubernetes-based way to spin up 100+ virtual SONiC switches in near-production topologies is directly useful to anyone running SONiC and CI/CD for network change validation.
• What: Alpine, a framework for instantiating virtual SONiC switches and deploying arbitrary topologies, able to build fabrics of more than 100 virtual switches spread across multiple K8s worker nodes, with lifecycle, provisioning, and initial config handled via Kubernetes. Intended for low-cost pre-submit CI test results. (from abstract only)
• How: Each virtual SONiC switch runs as a containerized workload; Kubernetes manages provisioning, config, and inter-switch connectivity, so full fabrics can be stood up in CI rather than on lab hardware.
• Where applicable: SONiC-based networks and NOS vendors wanting cheap large-scale pre-deploy testing; general technique (containerized NOS-in-K8s for fabric simulation) transfers to any NOS with a virtual-switch image. Google-contributed and open, which adds weight.