Getting Started

Dropship is a framework for automatically building rapidly deployed, consistent, and flexible network lab environments. Using Ansible, it automates the cloning, configuration, and deployment of entire networks without time-consuming manual configuration.

However, to remain flexible, Dropship has a lot of moving parts and can take some effort to get started, as there are a number of things you will need to do. Since every network deployment environment will be different, Dropship is unable to be a “runs-out-of-the-box” type of framework, its goal is to provide the scaffolding to make your deployments less manual and more automated and consistent. The short list of steps for getting Dropship up and running is as follows:

• Getting to know Dropship terms (See Dropship Basics)

• Building the “Commander Virtual Machine” (See Commander VM)

• Creating and configuring images (See Images)

• Crafting modules to fit your environment and needs: (See Modules)

• Creating network definition and instance files: (See Network Definitions and Instances)

• Running Dropship to deploy the network (See Operating Dropship)

However, once you’ve done the initial setup, further use will be much simpler.