I got my hands on a copy of VIRL and I was looking around today. I connected a few routers and logged into the them and noticed they are already configured. Or at least it looks like they have things configured like OSPF, BGP and the GigabitEthernet interfaces. I had no idea they come configured like that, so do you guys just configure around it or how do you guys do it? It looks like VIRL can be a really good asset to me learning more about Cisco. I still have my physical lab that I'm trying to finish but just wanted to see what all the fuss was about with VIRL. I can see it has lots of power.
you probably filled in the autonetkit bits. Thats exactly what its designed to do, to auto fill in the basic L3/routing for quick lab deployments.
If you start with a totally blank topology and don't fill in anything you will get blank routers.
ooooh I see. It really did help answer some of my questions, and help me better understand. Thanks for explaining. Do you use VIRL?
occasionally, mostly to get access to vASA and vNXOS, or if I want to fire python scripts at vIOS as its relatively easy to hook VIRL into a 'real' network.
I still use GNS3-IOU for conventional R&S labbing, its much quicker, lighter and easier.
Those two features really brought me over to VIRL. The vASA and vNXOS options. They are looking to bring in ASAs in our environment, so I think getting behind the wheel of them would serve me well. Same with NXOS. We have a lot of NXOS in our environment, but very expensive to get equipment or even rack time. I know it's lacking in terms of switching features but I think you can still manipulate things to make it work, such as OTV. I hope it comes along more in the next version where its a full fledged NXOS. That be nice.