Sandbox functionality

[phil96564]

Hi all

I don't quite understand what we are supposed to be able to do within these sandboxes. For example I have connected to the Cisco modelling labs enterprise lab and I can see the topology and open the console to the devices but

1. Do we need to stick with just the devices and topology provided? In other words are we supposed to be able to create our own topologies?

2. I have tried pinging from one device to another but no reply. Is the connectivity supposed to be already in place?

3. My ultimate aim is to create a lab in which I can learn Ansible, so I need an Ansible server and a few devices such as switches, routers etc., to use as managed hosts. Is this possible in this environment?

4. Should the devices in the lab be able to communicate with things, such as an Ansible server, running on my computer? Is that the purpose of the external connector maybe?

I got the impression this was a free alternative to the likes of VIRL, and better than GNS3 as it has access to the IOSv images thus having a better switch experience, but have I misunderstood its function and purpose?

Thanks

Phil.

[Sergey Lisitsin]

Hello Phil,

In VIRL you should be able to modify the topologies, but I believe all other labs have them fixed. The connectivity varies from lab to lab, depending on the objectives. Address configuration may be one of the exercises of the lab. With regards to Ansible, I don't know if there is a specific Ansible lab in Sandbox, but there is a nice little playground to practice Ansible on another site:

https://www.katacoda.com/courses/ansible/playground

My personal choice is to use GNS3 on a big beefy server with multiple images. There you can have whatever resources you want, like Ansible server or any other server types. GNS3 supports Docker containers, so is highly efficient on resources for that kind of thing.

[bigevilbeard]

Hello 

1. Do we need to stick with just the devices and topology provided? In other words are we supposed to be able to create our own topologies? You can use the pre-built topologies or build your own

2. I have tried pinging from one device to another but no reply. Is the connectivity supposed to be already in place? In the pre-built topologies if routing is in place, this should work

3. My ultimate aim is to create a lab in which I can learn Ansible, so I need an Ansible server and a few devices such as switches, routers etc., to use as managed hosts. Is this possible in this environment? Yes, https://github.com/CiscoDevNet/ansible-cml 

4. Should the devices in the lab be able to communicate with things, such as an Ansible server, running on my computer? Is that the purpose of the external connector maybe? As you connect inbound over the VPN, any inbound connections are possible to device

Hope this helps.