Using a network lab
It’s time for us to do some real code automation tests in a virtual environment. Certain open source and commercial products can be used in your environment for testing network automation. The differences between the commercial and open source solutions rely on the number of different types of devices that are supported and how to scale. Using an open source solution, you might be able to scale up thousands of devices, but it would be limited in terms of the types of devices that can be emulated. A combination of a commercial and open source network might be more useful.
Cisco has a program that allows the public to access emulated routers in a virtual lab; they are called sandboxes. Cisco offers free 24/7 remote access to its sandboxes, but the number of devices is limited. More on Cisco sandboxes can be found at https://developer.cisco.com/site/sandbox/.
As an example, the scrapligo project, described in Chapter 6, uses Cisco sandboxes; check details...
