[c-nsp] VIRL vs GNS3 vs Else for Automation practicing

[James Bensley]

On 21 May 2018 05:00:26 BST, Sami Joseph <sami.joseph at gmail.com> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I'd like to practice automation, specifically Ansible on different
>network
>operating systems, Cisco, Cumulus, Juniper.
>
>VIRL costs money but it has the IOS images bundled, GNS3 doesnt but
>i'll
>have to find the images, other than that, does anyone have any feedback
>?
>

I think it depends what vendors you're looking at, Cisco, Juniper, Arista, PaloAlto, all have devices which are ready-to-go virtual machines. I've have simply downloaded them and started them up and they work fine (for testing automation stuff against the management/control plane).

Other vendors also have downloadable VMs, above are just the ones I've used. The VMs are sometimes missing some forwarding plane features but the APIs are usually fully functional.

I don't bother with GNS3, VIRL, EVE etc. because I don't need to test any sort of changing topology. You can just start up a VM, give it an IP and let Ansible do whatever you need.

Cheers,
James.