Last time, I started studying for Cisco Certifications, I built a 6 router one switch lab on my desk. One router had console ports for all the other routers, and the management port was connected to my home network so I could telnet into each of the routers via their console ports. It was exciting and a great way to learn and stimulate complex configurations. The routers had just enough power to run BGP and IPSec tunnels.
This time, I found VIRL, which is interesting as you build a network inside an Eclipse environment. On the backend, the simulator creates a network of multiple VMs.
So far, I built a simple switch network. I’m using it with the Cloud service Packet as the memory and CPU requirements exceed my laptop. Packet provides a bare-metal server which is required for how VIRL does a pxe-boot. I wish there was a bare-metal option on AWS.
I’m still trying to figure out how to upload complex configurations and troubleshoot them.
The product is very interesting as it provides a learning environment for a few hundred dollars vs. the couple thousand which I spent last time to build my lab.
Last time, I started studying for Cisco Certifications, I built a 6 router one switch lab on my desk. One router had console ports for all the other routers, and the management port was connected to my home network so I could telnet into each of the routers via their console ports. It was exciting and a great way to learn and stimulate complex configurations. The routers had just enough power to run BGP and IPSec tunnels.
This time, I found VIRL, which is interesting as you build a network inside an Eclipse environment. On the backend, the simulator creates a network of multiple VMs.
So far, I built a simple switch network. I’m using it with the Cloud service Packet as the memory and CPU requirements exceed my laptop. Packet provides a bare-metal server which is required for how VIRL does a pxe-boot. I wish there was a bare-metal option on AWS.
I’m still trying to figure out how to upload complex configurations and troubleshoot them.
The product is very interesting as it provides a learning environment for a few hundred dollars vs. the couple thousand which I spent last time to build my lab.
