Dynamips, VM, and external switches

cnfuzzd

Hello Everyone

I am going to start studying for the cnnp track, and am setting up a dynamups lab using gns3. I installed gns3 on a virtual machine in my server. I also would like to connect some 2950's to the virtual lab, and be able to remotely access the host. My thought is that I will have to add a nic to the server (only one nic as of now) and tie it to the vm network, and then plug the switching infrastructure into that nic. Is this correct, or the best way to accomplish this?

Thanks!

John

dynamik

What virtualization package are you using, and what are the specs/OS of the server? You're not going to get as good of performance inside of a VM. I haven't done that setup before, but it seems like you could just bridge the VM to the physical network.

cnfuzzd

dynamik wrote: »

What virtualization package are you using, and what are the specs/OS of the server? You're not going to get as good of performance inside of a VM. I haven't done that setup before, but it seems like you could just bridge the VM to the physical network.

Hi Dynamik

The host is running server 08 x64, 8 gigs of memory, 2.3 dual-core. The virtual machine is running windows server 2003 with 4 gigs of memory inside vmware server 2.0 (my server doesn't do a whole lot except run various projects like this, and never concurrently) I was playing around with the VM over the weekend and performance seemed okay. I was thinking I would need the additional nic to isolate the test network, but I am very very uninformed on this.

thanks!

John

dynamik

Yea, you'd need another NIC if you wanted it to be on a different network. What's the reasoning for putting it in a VM and not directly on the 2008 machine though?

LarryDaMan

Good luck with your setup. I did something similar recently, but without the VMs.

I borrowed a couple of 2950s from work this past weekend and geeked out with Dynamips. You can basically use a trunking link from the supported switching module to add the "real" switches.

It took me a while, I found useful posts such as this one 7200emu.hacki.at :: View topic - creating dot1q trunk between dynagen and actual 2950 to help, but eventually I figured it out.

I stayed up until 3:30am tinkering with it, but it was pretty fun. I got my 5 router/2 switch network up and running! Cool stuff.

tiersten

dynamik wrote: »

What's the reasoning for putting it in a VM and not directly on the 2008 machine though?

What dynamik said. You'll get worse performance because of the VM.

cnfuzzd

tiersten wrote: »

What dynamik said. You'll get worse performance because of the VM.

Hmm, what is the performance hit likely to be? I almost automatically put everything into a vm now. I am terrible about cleanup after finishing one of these "experiments", and I like the compartmentalization afforded by virtual machines, but if this is going to be a serious issue, I will forego it. I probably will be doing nothing above the labs in the ccnp lab workbook. Should I just go to the host?

I still have a half-finished sharepoint site from a year ago, just sitting in a powered down vm. One day I will get back to it.

Thanks!

John

dynamik

Well you can look at dynamips/dynagen/GNS3 as virtualization of sorts, and the routers you create as your VMs. If you mess things up or want to start over, just blow them all away and start over.