Behind the Demo – OpsMill Infrahub + Arista AVD

Damien Garros, co-founder and CEO of OpsMill, explained the Arista AVD integration behind the earlier Infrahub demo. The session covered how OpsMill embedded Arista’s open-source PyAVD library in Infrahub’s transforms and generators, replacing AVD’s YAML files with data managed in Infrahub to produce validated Arista configurations within a broader multi-domain orchestration workflow. Garros presented the segment at Networking Field Day 41, where OpsMill announced the integration publicly for the first time.

Garros described AVD as a popular open-source Arista project used in hundreds of environments. It follows the same three-layer intent model as Infrahub: users define a design at a high level, such as a layer 2 or layer 3 spine-leaf or a service provider network, and AVD generates the technical layer and device configurations. It also produces test plans and per-device documentation, which Garros said customers especially value. AVD is normally Python wrapped in Ansible and integrated with CloudVision. OpsMill’s version uses no Ansible at all. Instead, OpsMill built Infrahub schemas that map to AVD’s data model, so Infrahub serves as the state machine for every layer. Arista’s logic runs inside Infrahub’s transforms and generators, and Infrahub still provides version control, the API, and the UI. Because Arista’s library generates the configurations, users don’t have to write their own Jinja templates. Garros said this means AVD covers about 15 percent of the 20 percent of custom work Infrahub leaves to customers, leaving only around 5 percent.

Garros clarified that AVD configures only the Arista devices. Because the firewall and compute data live in the same connected platform, though, a single change can drive the fabric through AVD alongside firewall and Kubernetes updates. Asked about other vendors’ validated designs, he said OpsMill is happy to work with any vendor and already has an online example based on Cisco validated designs. He added that customers integrate Infrahub with ACI, NDFC, Fortinet, F5, and even optical networks. Garros noted that AVD’s advantage is that Arista stands behind its configurations, but the same approach can be rebuilt for any vendor on Infrahub.