Nextmini | A New Research Testbed for Network Emulation and Experimentation

Deploy Nextmini across Sim/Boston/Arbutus-style VMs with host-network dataplanes and explicit controller public-IP wiring.

Use examples/sba-compose/ when you want a manual, per-VM Compose deployment across separate public-networked machines.

VM Role Split

VM role	Runs	Files on that VM
Controller VM (for example Arbutus)	`controller` + `postgres`	`controller-docker-compose.yml`, `controller-config.toml`
Node 1 VM (for example Sim)	`node1` dataplane	`node1-docker-compose.yml`, `node1-config.toml`
Node 2 VM (for example Boston)	`node2` dataplane	`node2-docker-compose.yml`, `node2-config.toml`

Host Networking Requirement

Both node compose files use:

network_mode: host

This is required because the dataplane config references host NIC names such as enp0s31f6 and eno2. Bridge networking hides those host interfaces and breaks public-interface binding.

Controller Address Wiring

node1-docker-compose.yml and node2-docker-compose.yml launch dataplanes with a websocket endpoint:

/var/nextmini/nextmini ws://206.12.89.244:3000

If your controller VM IP is different, rewrite both files before startup.

Startup Order (Reproducible)

1) Controller VM

cd ~/nextmini/examples/sba-compose
docker compose -f controller-docker-compose.yml up -d --build
docker compose -f controller-docker-compose.yml ps

2) Node 1 VM

cd ~/nextmini/examples/sba-compose
export CONTROLLER_IP=<controller_public_ip>
sed -i "s#ws://[^:]*:3000#ws://${CONTROLLER_IP}:3000#g" node1-docker-compose.yml
grep -n "ws://" node1-docker-compose.yml
docker compose -f node1-docker-compose.yml up -d --build
docker compose -f node1-docker-compose.yml ps

3) Node 2 VM

cd ~/nextmini/examples/sba-compose
export CONTROLLER_IP=<controller_public_ip>
sed -i "s#ws://[^:]*:3000#ws://${CONTROLLER_IP}:3000#g" node2-docker-compose.yml
grep -n "ws://" node2-docker-compose.yml
docker compose -f node2-docker-compose.yml up -d --build
docker compose -f node2-docker-compose.yml ps

4) Quick health checks (any VM)

docker logs --tail 100 controller
docker logs --tail 100 node1
docker logs --tail 100 node2

Cleanup (Reverse Order)

Node 1 VM

cd ~/nextmini/examples/sba-compose
docker compose -f node1-docker-compose.yml down --remove-orphans

Node 2 VM

cd ~/nextmini/examples/sba-compose
docker compose -f node2-docker-compose.yml down --remove-orphans

Controller VM

cd ~/nextmini/examples/sba-compose
docker compose -f controller-docker-compose.yml down --remove-orphans

For a full reset of controller database data, run the last command with -v.

SBA Compose Deployment