VIRL for CCIE

bharvey92

Hi Guys,

Posted a while back about EVE-NG, I spoke to work and they will purchase Cisco VIRL license for me so I think I am going to give this go for my CCIE studies - after I recertify my CCNP tomorrow (came a bit early before I could do the IE Written).

Has anyone worked with VIRL for CCIE study and more importantly prep for the CCIE R&S Labs?

Definitely going to invest in a new system before I purchase VIRL but wanted to put some feelers out there.

beads

Check the maximum limit on the number of devices. Its smaller than it sounds but if I recall somewhere near 90 or so? My partner in Infrastructure crime just bought one but already planning to buy lab time to supplement.

- b/eads

EANx

90? 20 is more like it. Per instance, you could always add more instances.

TechGuru80

Did they get the personal edition? The below link says 20 nodes...when it first was released they had a 20 node and 30 node version. Based on the resource calculator, you would need some serious computing power to have anywhere near 90 nodes if it were even capable.

https://learningnetworkstore.cisco.com/virtual-internet-routing-lab-virl/cisco-personal-edition-pe-20-nodes-virl-20

d4nz1g

i've been using virl for about a year during my ccie lab prep.
with 20 node license you can do plenty already, and INE topology does not have more than 15 nodes.
IOSv is the image you will best take advantage of, for both L2 and L3.

it is sooo easy to build your own topologies (built virtually every old 360 labs there), and INE was kind enough to share their topos in VIRL format with all scenarios pre confoigured:

https://github.com/Internetworkexpert/INE-VIRL

cheers

MitM

I have VIRL, it's pretty cool. I normally run the VIRL images inside of GNS3.

slinuxuzer

I have used VIRL and its very nice, I'm pretty sure it implements the full command set, and I'm sure you know that the CCIE RS uses a VIRL like product, don't think the RS lab has used gear in a while.

OfWolfAndMan

I enjoyed VIRL for the fact that it provided the ability to add scenario configs before starting a simulation. Very convenient. I have since then got an IOSv image, installed a number of them in ESXi, and not paid for it only because they no longer have the academic version and 200 is out of the budget currently. To work around the fact I can't add initial configs prior to booting the box up, I wrote a python script to automate the process, and more.

IOSvL2 is nice, BUTTTTTT it doesn't provide all the features for labbing scenarios that I've observed, hence why some PHYSICAL switching gear is necessary (3750x/3560 is the closest thing you can come to encompassing all the needed parts).

EANx

I had a copy and let the license expire after they got rid of the student version and the 30-device version. I had been planning on moving to the 30-device version but with work making CLCs available, I've since moved onto the CCIE Lab Builder product to use in conjunction with the 360 material. It didn't take much to convert the configs that INE provided into a Lab Builder format and did so for all of the basic /initial labs. I'm also often not home so laptop access to a remote resource became attractive.

If you're going to build a system and plan to run VIRL on it, you should have an SSD, the configs boot far faster from an SSD than from a spinning disk. I ended up building a beefy workstation expecting to dedicate the max of 64 GB to a VMware Workstation VM (plus OS and other stuff) but with the limit now at 20, you can easily get away with 64 GB of RAM leaving you 32+ for the VM.