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Verify Network-Lab Continuity After Reconstruction

  • Purpose: Decide whether reconstruction satisfies the environment's continuity contract.
  • Owner: Network operations
  • Impact: Opens access to the reconstructed environment for acceptance checks. Do not change target state while collecting the result.
  • Rollback strategy: Keep the restored environment isolated and retain both recovery generations when acceptance fails.

Pre-checks

Before release or migration, record a compact baseline:

  • topology or project identity and node count
  • image references
  • selected device hostnames and saved configuration markers
  • management addresses and access methods
  • routing adjacencies or other workload-specific health signals

Do not include passwords, licence content, private keys, or unredacted private environment data in a shared record.

Execute

After reconstruction, open private automation access:

ENV=<environment>
REF=<blueprint-ref>
hyops blueprint access --env "$ENV" --ref "$REF" --automation

From a second terminal:

hyops blueprint device list --env "$ENV" --ref "$REF"
hyops blueprint device ping --env "$ENV" --ref "$REF" <device>
hyops blueprint device ssh --env "$ENV" --ref "$REF" <device>

Compare the after-state with the baseline. For EVE-NG, distinguish saved native device configuration from QEMU writable state. For Containerlab, verify the selected topology authority and any retained native lab-directory state. For GNS3, verify project definitions and required disk state.

Verify

Acceptance requires all declared checks to pass. At minimum:

  • expected nodes exist and start
  • saved configuration markers are present
  • required management paths work
  • required adjacencies or services converge
  • the restore run record identifies the expected recovery set

Node boot alone is not sufficient when the lab depends on saved configuration, writable state, or protocol convergence.

Records

Retain the before-state, recovery manifest, release record, reconstruction record, and after-state result as one evidence chain. Record counterexamples and partial failures explicitly.

Rollback

Keep the reconstructed environment isolated. Restore the previous verified generation or return to the source host until the failed boundary is corrected.

References