Help me find a tool

I've spent the past few weeks trying to find a tool to meet the needs of a training module I've been working on.

The module is network mapping (manually using nmap and then using a tool like solarwinds).

I'm up to creating a lab for students to practice & get evaluated on and am coming up short on a way to implement it.

The environment needs to be completely virtual (I think there's an esx cluster everything gets loaded on in the back-end). For hosts that's easy, and for routers it's pretty easy too. Switches though.....

I've looked at the native ESX vswitch; doesn't (as far as I can determine) have the capability to be queried via SNMP for cam tables (or its equivalent) to generate the endhost-to-switch connections (or if it does, you're querying the entire esx box, rather than just the environment of the lab). I looked at nexus1000v, and it might have worked, if it weren't such a PITA to install and only provide a single switch per datacenter. OpenVSwitch didn't appear to support SNMP. VIRL I gave up on trying to get to work. GNS3 I passed on but am looking at again after remembering the etherswitch modules in 3725 routers; I don't think it'll work well but it might in a pinch. IOU I've gotten working, but isn't exactly something I could recommend for 'official use' ya know. Packet tracer got passed on due to it's limitations (which may or may not have been ... shall we say ... hasty)

Today I realized maybe I didn't even need to emulate a full switch, just something that would provide SNMP responses and found the Xian SNMP Simulator, which at first sounded like I'd found a solution... until I realized that would still fail to provide data actually connecting the device to end hosts.

Figured I'd reach out to see if anyone knows of anything that meets these needs: 1) Completely virtual. 2) SNMP capable. 3) multiple instances. And I guess 4) queries/replies will be able to 'connect the dots'

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Comments

dhay13

Try LANsurveyor? I don't think I have used it before so not sure it will do what you want.

bermovick

Ah; perhaps I didn't word things well. LANsurveyor (which is now Network Topology Mapper) is one of the tools being trained. What I'm trying to develop is the environment this will be run on. A half dozen VMs representing some servers and workstations, along with a couple routers representing different sites in the Campus LAN, and a switch or two at each site. But since it has to be virtual, I haven't been able to find anything that works as the switch device.