Cisco Modeling Labs

[iliass020]

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

[bigevilbeard]

@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.

[iliass020]

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

[bigevilbeard]

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

[iliass020]

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

[zowu · Accepted solution]

CML is back to sandbox catalog now. 

[erikapostol]

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

[bigevilbeard]

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

[mrcisco007]

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?

[bigevilbeard]

@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.

[smstetson]

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

[bigevilbeard]

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!

[smstetson]

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.

[bigevilbeard]

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

[smstetson]

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!