In my previous blog post I’ve adapted the INE’s CCIE Routing and Switching topology to be used with EVE-NG using IOSv (or vIOS) L3 images for routers and L2 images for switches.
Following the promise in that blog post, I’ve adapted the same topology using Cisco CSR1000v images for routers and IOSv L2 images for switches. There isn’t much to say about this topology since mostly is matching the original INE’s one for routers (including the configuration files) and the major difference is the utilization of virtual switches.
Since we’re using virtual switches, the configuration files for switches are still different. I’ve adapted these ones to match the interface names of IOSv-L2:
Real Switches – vIOS-L2
Fa0/1 - Gi0/0 - SW1 only connection to bridge Fa0/19 - Gi0/2 Fa0/20 - Gi0/3 Fa0/21 - Gi1/0 Fa0/22 - Gi1/1 Fa0/23 - Gi1/2 Fa0/24 - Gi1/3
For convenience, the switches topology looks like this in EVE-NG:
For routers, the interfaces stays the same since we’re using CSR1000v images.
Here is how the network topology looks like. No surprise here, just added for convenience:
If you don’t have the CSR1000v image added to your installation of EVE-NG, please download it (Cisco.com is a good starting point) and add it following these How-to:
HowTo add Cisco Cloud Service Router (CSR1000V NG) Denali and Everest
or
HowTo add Cisco Cloud Service Router (CSR1000V) – for pre Denali or Everest images.
If you’re curious I’m using csr1000v-universalk9.03.12.03.S.154-2.S3-std image when testing for this lab.
Before sharing the download links, a word of advice.
It may be that CSR1000v images are more stable and support all features when compared with IOSv-L3, however this comes with a cost in term of resources. Each node has by default 3GB RAM assigned and I wouldn’t recommend trying to decrease it.
Once the nodes boot up, the actual used RAM will be less, but still you need more resources to use CSR1000v.
My recommendation for 10 routers using CSR1000v images would be at least 16GB RAM assigned to the EVE-NG virtual machine. The same if you’re using EVE-NG on a bare metal machine.
Last but not least, somebody asked me when I’m going to provide the same topology with 20 routers.
No need. You can extend the default topology with as many devices as you want. The modified configuration files for labs with 20 routers are already modified and present in the archive you download. Just add the missing R11 until R20 devices.
If you encounter errors that are critical, please let me know and I’ll try to correct them.
Download files:
EVE-NG-INE-CCIEv5-Topology-CSR1000v.zip
INE-CCIEv5-RS-Initial-Configuration-for-EVE-NG-CSR1000v.zip
Happy labbing and let me know if you find these materials useful!