BGP peer groups with settings

[Omripresent]

I'm not sure what's the approach of managing a peer group at a given router/scope level with group based settings.
Is the function of peer template to be used for grouping or should we have a specific model for that?

I think those functions can coexist with peer templates being a more generic set of configs that can be applied to both BGP group and peer, groups are one level more specific to the router or scope with its own settings overriding the template, and further down to the specific peer operating the same way.

In most cases I've seen a lot of the same settings are reused across groups (Juniper apply-group for example). I would like to open a few features requests to add this functionality but would like some input if it applied to other admin's use cases.

[DanSheps]

Peer Templates are Peer Groups. My reference implementation is Cisco, I don't have Juniper/Arista but on Nexus they are called Peer Templates, on IOS they are Peer Groups. Nexus doesn't have the concept of Peer Groups.

Juniper, from what I can tell from the CLI reference doesn't have Peer Templates. I can maybe clarify that Peer Group/Peer Template are the same thing in the UI (Feel free to open an issue)

[Omripresent]

Here's a quick example on the Juniper side in terms of templates, BGP groups, and neighbors (peers)

This is how the configuration looks on the device, where the top level groups section allows some level of templating

groups {
    MY-BGP-TEMPLATE {
        protocols {
            bgp {
                group <*> {
                    passive;
                }
            }
        }
    }
}
protocols {
    bgp {
        apply-groups MY-BGP-TEMPLATE;
        type external;
        group MY-BGP-GROUP {
            neighbor 1.2.3.4 {
                peer-as 1234;
            }
        }
    }
}

And this is the final configuration result that will be applied

protocols {
    bgp {
        group MY-BGP-GROUP {
            ##
            ## 'passive' was inherited from group 'MY-BGP-TEMPLATE'
            ##
            passive;
            type external;
            neighbor 1.2.3.4 {
                peer-as 1234;
            }
        }
    }
}

In this case we can have configurations at 3 different levels, templates (where passive is defined), group (where type is defined) and neighbor (where peer-as is defined).

And even when not using Juniper where EOS doesn't support the top level groups function, it would still be a good option to use with Netbox's template engine when creating configurations for EOS, and others. If we can define a reusable or repetitive configuration items (bgp password for example) that must be the same across peers, applying a single template for that across peer groups, or peers makes it manageable at scale when a password rotate is needed.

If you're okay with this approach I'll write up an issue for it. If not I'll just ask to have the same settings function be supported in peer templates.

[DanSheps]

Yeah, looking at the config, that is a peer template.

Your "template" (AKA group, as per your root config statement) is distinct from an update group. That would simply be a session setting (which is easy to add IMO).

There are settings available in peer template, but peer address families can also be assigned to peer Templates which are for routing policy.