topic Re: Cisco Modeling Labs in DevNet Sandbox

Cisco Modeling Labs

iliass020 — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 09:43:42 GMT

Hello everybody,

I am trying to use a free CML simulator from Cisco. I am already logged in and i can see different sandboxes.
But when i click on the Cisco Modeling Labs and the launch button, it gives me this error: Environment Launch was Denied.

I also cannot click on reservable which is mentioned on the sendbox. Does anybody know how to solve this issue?
I want to start with the CCNP course, but i need a simulator in order to proceed. Packet Tracer will not be suitable in this case.

Best regards,

Iliass020

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

bigevilbeard — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 10:32:08 GMT

@iliass020

see this thread/info from the team https://community.cisco.com/t5/devnet-sandbox/active-environments-launched-from-this-blueprint-reached/m-p/4976470#M9010

Apologies for the inconvenience here. 

We have just switched to a new sandbox platform and it will take a few days for us to reach a steady state. We are still running a bunch of CML instances in our old system which will gradually end over the coming days. For capacity reasons, we cannot make CML available on the system until this happens. 
We will update the community when CML is available again. Be aware of two things though. There will still be an upper limit of concurrent CML labs we can run. This is due to the large footprint of CML. Secondly, there is no scheduler on our new system so its first come first serve. This is the case for all sandbox labs.
Thanks for your patients, 
Joseph Kearns 
Sandbox Support.

You can install CML on your personal machine here if you need a network virtualization for your CCMP --> https://learningnetworkstore.cisco.com/cisco-modeling-labs-personal/cisco-modeling-labs-personal/CML-PERSONAL.html

Hope this helps.

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

iliass020 — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 10:42:07 GMT

Hello Bigevelbeard,

Thanks a lot for your quick reply. And also thanks for sharing the link for installing the simulator.
Unfortunately this one cost 199 USD, which is not for free. I think i just need to wait until they fixed the issue then.

Best regards,

Iliass020

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

bigevilbeard — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 10:47:25 GMT

I understand. If you are looking for a free platform see if you/your company allows you access to Cisco dCloud.

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

iliass020 — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 10:56:56 GMT

Hi Bigevilbeard,

Thanks for your quick response again. I will check if there are other solutions to work with if CML will not work.
Have a nice day

Kind regards,

Iliass

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

zowu — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 05:18:02 GMT

CML is back to sandbox catalog now.

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

erikapostol — Sun, 07 Jan 2024 05:30:07 GMT

I'm still seeing the error Environment Launch was Denied after clicking Launch. Anyone else see this too?

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

bigevilbeard — Sun, 07 Jan 2024 08:14:25 GMT

@erikapostol this means all reservations are currently full for this sandbox.

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

mrcisco007 — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 17:54:57 GMT

Suggestion instead of

Can that be re-worded to say, "all reservations are currently full for this sandbox"

In the future will there be additional instances of CML available or will this be the only one?

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

bigevilbeard — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 18:33:23 GMT

@mrcisco007 it was posted in another thread there are 15 instances of this sandbox which can be reserved. The team also mentioned this year they are looking to expand on this.

Hope this helps.

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

smstetson — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 01:22:59 GMT

Man I guess I need to find another way to study for the CCNP. bummer.

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

bigevilbeard — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 09:40:27 GMT

Back in the day i bought 8 x 2811, 4 x 3560 and a few 2960 switches. Now you can just use the sandboxes or run CML-P on your machine! 🙂

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

smstetson — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 23:55:19 GMT

Yes, virtual labs are a god-send. That's the point of this thread though. The sandbox for CML does not work any more. I haven't been able to get a reservation in MONTHS.

I can run CML on a machine and I guess that's what I need to do. But now, instead of studying routers and switches which is what I want to be doing, I am spending all my free cycles on learning AWS, current hardware specs, CML, etc so I can make a decent decision about how I'm going to run CML. From what I can tell the support for CML-P is 'community' based. And I don't see a whole lot of forum posts on the topic - so that doesn't really give me the warm fuzzies that I'm going to have a very good experience with it.

The sandbox was amazing. I really wish it still worked. But, I am willing to be honest enough that my use case was not necessarily the intended purpose of the sandbox. But I wish there was a simpler solution to get something working again - ie they had put a paid hosted service into place before the sandbox became completely unusable. Oh well.

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

bigevilbeard — Sat, 13 Jan 2024 07:53:19 GMT

Community based in support you mean? You can check and see if you have access to Cisco dCloud.

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

smstetson — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 12:03:50 GMT

I ended up buying a CML persona license. I will probably start a thread to go into detail on my experience running CML. Short story is I found a C220-M4 locally for $109 with 2xE5-2630v3 and 32G RAM. I am adding 2 SAS drives for $40. So for $150 I think I will be able to run any lab I would need for CCNP. If I find I need a little more performance there are tons of options in the 2600 v3 and v4 lines. I am pretty sure I can still upgrade the CPU and RAM quite a bit on this system and keep the total cost (pre-tax) under $200. Pretty reasonable. We will see if I have miscalculated horribly!

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

fufufanatic — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 17:45:08 GMT

Hi,

Did you ever create that thread to track your progress with personal CML?

I might need to go your route; haven't been able to reserve anything in DevNet for weeks.

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

smstetson — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 18:37:54 GMT

I did create a thead. Honestly the process of getting CML running on my server was very easy. Although I planned to run CML bare metal, I found a job posting where they used a competitors switches. The role matched my skills extremely well - but I decided it would be good to change my install to allow labbing other vendors. What I did was change the installation to ESXi on my server and then use the ova installation of cml on top of that. This also was straight forward and well described in the cml docs. I then also installed an eve-ng server ova and used their docs to create virtual switches from the competitor. I find even with the extra layer of virtualization the weak system is adequate for what I am doing. I will note the cpus are unsupported in the current version of esxi and I had to ignore a warning to that effect during installation. Everything works though.wI was shocked that I did not make it past the HR interview. I was planning on offering to present a demo of my home lab during the manager interview. Oh well, their loss. I am glad I changed to the esxi setup just for the added flexibility. I prefer cml but it is nice to also be able to spin up non cisco gear when needed.

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

iliass020 — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 07:59:00 GMT

Hello everybody,

I finally decided to buy a subscribtion from CML (CML personal). Because it still did not work out.
I don't know if anybody here has experience with the installation of this, please let me know.

Kind regards,

Iliass

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

bigevilbeard — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 10:46:42 GMT

@iliass020 see the community for CML-P https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/s/topic/0TO3i00000094ZjGAI/cisco-modeling-labs-personal-community

Re: Cisco Modeling Labs

iliass020 — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 12:13:54 GMT

Hello Bigevelbeard,

Thanks a lot for your reply. I will have a look at it.

Regards,

Iliass