CSR 1000v for Lab on VMware Fusion

[Frank Mittrup]

Just trying to setup a CSR 1000v as a vCUBE on a MAC with VMware Fusion 10.1.6. Yes, it's unsupported but there are many how to's around and it actually works with 16.06.07. If I'm jumping to 16.09.05 and above there are just no interfaces appearing in IOS-XE.

To meet the requirements a I need a minimum of 16.9.5.

Any trick here for getting it working?

Many thanks!

[Frank Mittrup · Accepted solution]

Reading through the web I found the solution:

On an external page I found the information, that Cisco does not support E1000 NIC's anymore:

https://success.ilandcloud.com/articles/cisco-csr-1000v-upgrade-guide

"If your CSR has VMware E1000 NICs attached, they will not work correctly when upgrading to higher versions that no longer support E1000 NICs. The recommended NIC type according to Cisco is VMXNET3."

VMware Fusion is using E1000 NIC per default and has no GUI option to change this. So, how to change this?

1. Right-click the virtual machine and select Show package Contents.

2. Edit the *.vmx File and change the 3 NIC's from e1000 to vmxnet3

ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"

ethernet1.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"

ethernet2.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"

3. Shutdown and restart Fusion

A bit tricky but it works!