necessary to screen scrape and parse different
proprietary CLI outputs, as pyATS automatically
accomplishes this through its extensive collection of
parsers and outputs the data into standard formats that
can be easily consumed. The platform is easily extensible
and customizable with scripts and test cases that pertain
to various environments. A pyATS CLI is also available
for network testers who are not comfortable with Python.
pyATS supports several options to connect to devices:
Telnet, SSH, REST, NETCONF, and RESTCONF.
pyATS can be installed through pip by issuing the
following command:
pip install pyats[full]Different options are available:
pyats[full] installs all pyATS components, the pyATS library
framework, and optional extras.
pyats[library] installs all the pyATS components without the optional
extras.
pyats without any options installs just the pyATS test infrastructure
framework.As of this writing, pyATS version 20.1 is the current
version, and it is only available for Linux and macOS.
Microsoft Windows is not directly supported, but
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) can be used to run
pyATS on Windows 10. As usual, it is recommended to
install pyATS in its own virtual environment. A prebuilt
Docker container with pyATS already installed can be
found at https://hub.docker.com. More up-to-date
information on pyATS versions, documentation, and
installation steps can be found online at
https://developer.cisco.com/pyats/.
In order to start working with pyATS, a testbed YAML
file needs to be created. This file contains the
connectivity details for all the devices in the testbed.