EVPN Ninja

The Ultimate VXLAN/EVPN Fabric Planning & Configuration Tool

Features • Installation • Quick Start • Commands • Vendors • Lab Export

Overview

EVPN Ninja is a powerful cross-platform CLI tool designed for network engineers to plan, calculate, and generate configurations for VXLAN/EVPN data center fabrics. Whether you're designing a small campus network or a large-scale multi-tenant datacenter, EVPN Ninja has you covered.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Plan → Calculate → Generate → Deploy                          │
│                                                                 │
│  ┌───────┐    ┌───────────┐    ┌──────────┐    ┌───────────┐  │
│  │Fabric │ => │ IP Plans  │ => │  Configs │ => │Containerlab│ │
│  │Design │    │ VNI/ASN   │    │ 18 Vendors│   │EVE-NG/GNS3│  │
│  └───────┘    └───────────┘    └──────────┘    └───────────┘  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

✨ Features

Calculators

Key Capabilities

• 18 Vendor Support — Generate configs for Arista, Cisco, Juniper, Nokia, and 14 more vendors
• Lab Export — Export to Containerlab, EVE-NG, and GNS3 for instant lab deployment
• Presets — Built-in presets for small, medium, and large datacenters
• Config File — Save your defaults in ~/.evpn-ninja.yaml
• Multiple Outputs — Table, JSON, or YAML output for automation
• IP Validation — Automatic overlap and capacity checks for IP networks
• Interactive Mode — Guided wizard for beginners

📦 Installation

From PyPI

pip install evpn-ninja

From Source

git clone https://github.com/ashimov/evpn-ninja.git
cd evpn-ninja
pip install -e .

Standalone Binary

Download prebuilt binaries from GitHub Releases:

# Linux/macOS: make executable and run
chmod +x evpn-ninja-*
./evpn-ninja-linux-amd64 --help

Shell Completion

# Bash
evpn-ninja completion bash > ~/.evpn-ninja-complete.bash
echo "source ~/.evpn-ninja-complete.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

# Zsh
evpn-ninja completion zsh > ~/.evpn-ninja-complete.zsh
echo "source ~/.evpn-ninja-complete.zsh" >> ~/.zshrc

# Fish
evpn-ninja completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/evpn-ninja.fish

🚀 Quick Start

# Show all available commands
evpn-ninja --help

# Use a preset for quick calculations
evpn-ninja --preset large-dc fabric

# Calculate MTU requirements
evpn-ninja mtu --payload 1500 --underlay ipv4

# Generate EVPN configs for multiple vendors
evpn-ninja evpn --as 65000 --loopback 10.0.0.1 --l2-vni 10010 --vendor arista --vendor cisco-nxos

# Export to Containerlab for testing
evpn-ninja export containerlab --spines 2 --leaves 4 --platform eos --output-dir ./lab

# Interactive guided mode
evpn-ninja interactive

📖 Commands

MTU Calculator

Calculate the required underlay MTU for VXLAN encapsulation with a detailed breakdown of each layer.

evpn-ninja mtu --payload 1500 --underlay ipv4 --outer-vlan 1

                              VXLAN MTU Breakdown
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Layer          ┃ Size (bytes) ┃ Description                                ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Outer Ethernet │ 14           │ Dst MAC + Src MAC + EtherType              │
│ Outer VLAN     │ 4            │ 802.1Q tag                                 │
│ Outer IPv4     │ 20           │ Standard IPv4 header                       │
│ UDP            │ 8            │ Source port + Dest port (4789) + Length    │
│ VXLAN Header   │ 8            │ Flags + Reserved + VNI + Reserved          │
│ Inner Ethernet │ 14           │ Dst MAC + Src MAC + EtherType              │
│ Inner Payload  │ 1500         │ Original L3 packet (IP + data)             │
└────────────────┴──────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────┘

╭─────────────────────────────── Summary ────────────────────────────────╮
│   Required MTU        1554 bytes                                       │
│   Recommended MTU     1600 bytes                                       │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

VNI Allocation

Plan VNI assignments using multiple allocation schemes.

# VLAN-based scheme
evpn-ninja vni --scheme vlan-based --base-vni 10000 --start-vlan 100 --count 5

# Tenant-based scheme
evpn-ninja vni --scheme tenant-based --tenant-id 5 --start-vlan 100 --count 3

# Output as JSON for automation
evpn-ninja vni --scheme vlan-based --base-vni 10000 --count 10 --output json

Fabric Parameters

Generate complete IP addressing plans and resource estimates for leaf-spine fabrics.

evpn-ninja fabric --vteps 8 --spines 4 --vnis 500 --hosts 100 \
  --loopback-net 10.0.0.0/24 \
  --vtep-net 10.0.1.0/24 \
  --p2p-net 10.0.100.0/22

Features:

• Router loopback allocation
• VTEP (NVE) loopback allocation
• P2P /31 link addressing
• Resource estimates (MAC entries, EVPN routes, BGP sessions)
• Automatic IP overlap and capacity validation

EVPN Parameters

Calculate RD/RT values and generate vendor-specific configurations.

# L2 VNI only
evpn-ninja evpn --as 65000 --loopback 10.0.0.1 --l2-vni 10010 --vlan 10 --vendor arista

# L2 + L3 VNI (symmetric IRB)
evpn-ninja evpn --as 65000 --loopback 10.0.0.1 \
  --l2-vni 10010 --vlan 10 \
  --l3-vni 50000 --vrf TENANT-A \
  --vendor arista --vendor cisco-nxos --vendor juniper

eBGP Underlay

Design RFC 7938 compliant eBGP underlay with automatic ASN allocation.

evpn-ninja ebgp --spines 4 --leaves 16 --scheme private-4byte --p2p-net 10.0.100.0/22

ASN Schemes:

• private-2byte — 64512-65534
• private-4byte — 4200000000+ (recommended)
• custom — Specify base ASN

Multi-homing

Calculate EVPN multi-homing parameters including ESI generation.

evpn-ninja multihoming --es-count 4 --peers 2 --mode active-active --vendor arista

Features:

• ESI Type-0, Type-1 (LACP), Type-3 (MAC-based)
• LACP system ID configuration
• DF election algorithm settings
• Vendor configs for Arista, Cisco, Juniper

Route Reflector

Calculate BGP Route Reflector placement for EVPN overlay.

evpn-ninja rr --clients 16 --placement spine --redundancy pair

Bandwidth Calculator

Estimate fabric bandwidth and oversubscription ratios.

evpn-ninja bandwidth --leaves 8 --spines 4 \
  --uplinks 4 --uplink-speed 100g --downlinks 48 --downlink-speed 25g

🏭 Supported Vendors

EVPN Ninja generates production-ready configurations for 18 vendors:

# Generate config for specific vendor
evpn-ninja evpn --as 65000 --loopback 10.0.0.1 --l2-vni 10010 --vendor nokia-srlinux

# Generate for multiple vendors at once
evpn-ninja evpn --as 65000 --loopback 10.0.0.1 --l2-vni 10010 \
  --vendor arista --vendor cisco-nxos --vendor juniper

🧪 Lab Export

Export your fabric design directly to network simulators for testing.

Containerlab

evpn-ninja export containerlab \
  --spines 2 --leaves 4 \
  --platform eos \
  --lab-name my-fabric \
  --include-hosts \
  --output-dir ./containerlab

# Deploy the lab
cd containerlab && make deploy

EVE-NG

evpn-ninja export eve-ng \
  --spines 2 --leaves 4 \
  --platform nxos \
  --lab-name evpn-test \
  --output-dir ./eve-ng

GNS3

evpn-ninja export gns3 \
  --spines 2 --leaves 4 \
  --platform eos \
  --lab-name gns3-fabric \
  --output-dir ./gns3

Export All Formats

evpn-ninja export all --spines 2 --leaves 4 --output-dir ./automation

This creates:

automation/
├── ansible/
│   ├── inventory.yaml
│   └── group_vars/
├── nornir/
│   ├── inventory/
│   └── config.yaml
├── containerlab/
│   ├── my-fabric.clab.yml
│   ├── configs/
│   └── Makefile
├── eve-ng/
│   └── my-fabric.unl
└── gns3/
    └── my-fabric.gns3

⚙️ Configuration

Config File

Create a config file at ~/.evpn-ninja.yaml to set your defaults:

defaults:
  mtu:
    payload_size: 1500
    underlay_type: ipv4
  fabric:
    spine_count: 2
    vtep_count: 4
    loopback_network: "10.0.0.0/24"
    vtep_loopback_network: "10.0.1.0/24"
  evpn:
    bgp_as: 65000
    vendors:
      - arista
      - cisco-nxos

output:
  format: table
  no_color: false

presets:
  my-dc:
    fabric:
      spine_count: 4
      vtep_count: 32
      vni_count: 1000
    ebgp:
      scheme: private-4byte

# Initialize default config
evpn-ninja config init

# Show current config
evpn-ninja config show

# Use custom config file
evpn-ninja --config /path/to/config.yaml fabric

Built-in Presets

# List available presets
evpn-ninja --list-presets

# Use a preset
evpn-ninja --preset large-dc fabric
evpn-ninja --preset small-dc ebgp

📤 Output Formats

All commands support multiple output formats:

# Pretty tables (default)
evpn-ninja fabric --vteps 4 --spines 2 --output table

# JSON for automation/scripting
evpn-ninja fabric --vteps 4 --spines 2 --output json

# YAML for config files
evpn-ninja fabric --vteps 4 --spines 2 --output yaml

# Save to file
evpn-ninja fabric --vteps 4 --spines 2 --output json --save fabric.json

🛠️ Development

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/ashimov/evpn-ninja.git
cd evpn-ninja

# Install with dev dependencies
pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Run linter
ruff check src/

# Run formatter
ruff format src/

# Run type checker
mypy src/

# Run tests
pytest

# Run all checks
ruff check src/ && ruff format src/ && mypy src/ && pytest

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

👤 Author

Berik Ashimov

• Website: ashimov.com
• GitHub: @ashimov

_{Built with ❤️ for the network engineering community}

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