Virtual Cisco devices

[barrygallacher]

Hi folks,

I'm a student in uni and trying to get my CCNA. I had a thought.

Since the Cisco Ios is linux based, would it be possible to take a standard IOS image, create a VMware machine with the relevant virtual hardware specs, and install ios to that device as a virtual device in order to have run and connect to other devices in things like GNS 3, or even connect directly (virtually) to VMware machines?

For instance if I had a Catalyst 2960 24 port switch. Could I take that IOS, create a virtual machine with 24 F/E network adapaters, copy the specs for ram, rom and CPU, and install the IOS image on there as a linux machine?

Many thanks

Barry

[Seb Rupik]

Hi there,

It depends on the underlying hardware architecture. IOS typically runs on MIPS. vMware et al can only virtualise x86 hardware.

Certainly ASA-OS, NX-OS and some IOS-XE can be virtualised in this manner, there are plenty of howtos online usually with mixed results.

You are better off using something like EVE-NG or maybe VIRL where some clever chaps have done the hard work for you.

cheers,

Seb.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Seb is pointing you in the right direction, but, in theory, yes you could create an emulator for an IOS image running on a x86 platform. However, as Seb notes, the underlying hardware is different, so such an emulator would likely run very, very slowly.