Who has implemented physical with the virtual (GNS3)?

As I am about to dive immedietly into my switch studies (passing route Friday). I started to think how I would lab the switching topics. Obviously the biggest hurdle is GNS3 does not yet support switching. However, I have been looking into making physical switches work with virtual routers in GNS3.

These are the topics I have read:

Network emulations: Connecting GNS3 lab to the internet - Lesson1
Connecting GNS3 to Real Networks - GNS3

The second document is more tailored to setting up the physical the 1st is just a cool factor I may try as well.

I plan on grabbing some basic 2950 swiches off ebay. They are DIRT CHEAP! I plan to use those as my layer 2 and the routers as the layer 3 stuff.

So... I was just curious if anybody has done this successfully and how it worked out for them. Also any issues / limitations with using this as a labbing alerternative to Rack time / full physical lab? Any you an share about making this work would be great!

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Danielh22185

FYI I wanted to do this via a quad NIC setup from my desktop so I have dedicated cables running from the swtich to my adapater. I don't want to use a layer 3 break out switch if it is not needed.

EdTheLad

I had this setup afew years ago, i replicated the INE lab with GNS connected to 4 3550s. My advise is go for 3550's rather than 2950s then you can work with INE dynamips workbooks, well at least the older versions of INE. I had 3 quad nics for my pc, and also needed usb/ethernet adapters along with usb hub.
I made lots of short cat5 cables, that's one skill i'll have with me forever, nice to be able to quickly crimp a cable if needed.

Worked perfectly, my only issue was cpu and ram limitations.

Asif Dasl

I have yet to try this, I have the quad-port NICs and 2 x 3550s so I am interested in this thread... have a look at these YouTube videos as well..

Building a Cisco Lab Using GNS3 and Quad NICs Part 1/3 - YouTube

Building a Cisco Lab using GNS3 and Quad NICs Part 2/3 - YouTube

Building a Cisco Lab using GNS3 and Quad NICs Part 3/3 - YouTube

Danielh22185

May I ask why you guys are using 3550s?

xnx

3550's double as a layer 3 switch so you can do routing and l2/l3 QoS on them

Danielh22185

xnx wrote: »

3550's double as a layer 3 switch so you can do routing and l2/l3 QoS on them

Would that not be the reason for connecting the physical switches to routers logically?

xnx

You could do but the 3550 will come into use as an individual unit for CCIE as you're not going to be using a ROAS config when there's no need.

gorebrush

Don't you need one switch to effectively become a breakout switch? I hear 3750's are best for this.

EdTheLad

3550's are cheap! for additional features like private vlans etc better to use rack rental.

Danielh22185

xnx wrote: »

You could do but the 3550 will come into use as an individual unit for CCIE as you're not going to be using a ROAS config when there's no need.

I am not exactly aiming for this to be CCIE scalable. I am just looking to do simple labs to practice topics learned on an NP level. I won't be going for IE any time soon either as I plan to get other vendor certs first.

Danielh22185

gorebrush wrote: »

Don't you need one switch to effectively become a breakout switch? I hear 3750's are best for this.

That is one of the methods. The method I am referring to is using dedicated ROAS type setups.

Danielh22185

EdTheLad wrote: »

3550's are cheap! for additional features like private vlans etc better to use rack rental.

I just looked into those, they are cheap indeed. I may consider that over 2950s. Are private vlans something tailored to NP level content I should prepare to have and prepare to be able to practice?

Also do you guys see any other limitations to the ideas I have proposed? I am trying to design something strickly tailored to NP studies.

astrogeek

CCNP Switch requires layer 3 switches, and 3550's are pretty much the cheapest L3 switches you can get. 2950/2060's can be mixed in your lab, but you'll need at least 2 L3 switches. At a minimum you will want (2) 3550/3560's and (2) 2950/2960's. I ended up getting a deal on (4) 3550's which works as well.

As for your setup - I did this a while back and in my opinion it's really not worth the effort. I had a hard time finding cheap quad NIC cards, and most won't work in a typical PC. I ended up buying a Dell server, (partially to get it working, partially because I thought it would be cool), but I never really used it the way I thought I would - at least not for CCNP studying. For the most part on CCNP Route I stuck with GNS3, and for CCNP Switch I stuck with my 4 3550 switches. I rarely bothered interconnecting the switches with GNS3 emulated routers.

It's still fun to setup though, just not as practical unless you're studying INE's CCIE labs. If you're really interested I have a Dell 2850 server with 3 quad NICs I wouldn't mind getting rid of

Asif Dasl

astrogeek wrote: »

I had a hard time finding cheap quad NIC cards, and most won't work in a typical PC.

I use HP NC364T quad port NICs - they are an Intel PRO/1000 PT underneath the HP badge. They are about €60 or $80 each which is not too bad. They work in a PCI Express 4x slot which most desktop PCs would have at least 1 or 2 PCI Express 16x slots. My Asus Z87 PRO motherboard has 3 slots available with integrated graphics from the CPU so you could build a CCIE capable lab using that board. Not that I am!

fredrikjj

Danielh22185 wrote: »

I am not exactly aiming for this to be CCIE scalable. I am just looking to do simple labs to practice topics learned on an NP level. I won't be going for IE any time soon either as I plan to get other vendor certs first.

In that case, a fancy setup really isn't necessary. Two L3 switches and two L2 is enough. The only thing you'll gain from attaching a bunch of routers is using them as hosts.

Danielh22185

If 3550s are all I really need and will do the job then I may just go that route.

fredrikjj

Danielh22185 wrote: »

If 3550s are all I really need and will do the job then I may just go that route.

Afaik, the only CCNP feature they don't support is private vlans.

Danielh22185

fredrikjj wrote: »

Afaik, the only CCNP feature they don't support is private vlans.

Sounds like a pretty decent investment then. Will 3560s support private VLANs? (Thinking ahead, I may buy a device that does)

fredrikjj

You could get a single 3560 to do PVLANs on; only the switch(es) that use the PVLAN ports need to support it.

EdTheLad

Buy the 3550's , private vlans are nothing, learn the theory and you'll probably never see again after the exam, that's if it even makes the exam.

Danielh22185

EdTheLad wrote: »

Buy the 3550's , private vlans are nothing, learn the theory and you'll probably never see again after the exam, that's if it even makes the exam.

Kind of where my thoughts were. Thanks!

Also I still plan to play with implementing these into GNS3 for fun. I may not do such a huge setup. To start I may just buy a couple USB NICs.

Thanks for the help guys!

pitviper

I hope to play around with this a tad this weekend – I’m replicating the TSHOOT topology with physical 2960 access layer, 3560 distribution layer switches, VMware for hosts, and GNS3 for the rest.

Danielh22185

pitviper wrote: »

I hope to play around with this a tad this weekend – I’m replicating the TSHOOT topology with physical 2960 access layer, 3560 distribution layer switches, VMware for hosts, and GNS3 for the rest.

Interesting you mention this. This may be a great option to practice the TSHOOT topology.

pitviper

I setup the TSOOT topology in GNS3 this week using physical switches. I was surprised at just how straight forward the topology is – and at how many things I configured incorrectly by doing it from scratch “on the fly” LOL All good now – works great. I’m using 3560s for distribution, and a single 2960 as the access layer switch. Also decided to just use my laptop for the host because I didn’t feel like spinning up another machine.

Needed to change the Switch Database Management template for IPv6 support on the 3560s:

sdm prefer dual-ipv4-and-ipv6 routing