The VIRL website (http://virl.cisco.com/) offers lots of guidance, preparation, and documentation. I also find that the VIRL user community generally offers quick and accurate help. I will not repeat information already offered in those two places; however, here are some of the setups I use for the lab in this book:
- VIRL uses two virtual Ethernet interfaces for connections. The first interface is set up as NAT for the host machine's internet connection, and the second is used for local management interface connectivity (VMnet2 in the following example). I use a separate virtual machine with a similar network setup in order to run my Python code, with the first primary Ethernet used for internet connectivity and the second Ethernet connection to Vmnet2 for lab device management network:
- VMnet2 is a custom network created to connect the Ubuntu host with the VIRL virtual machine:
- In the Topology Design option, I set the Management Network option to Shared flat network in order to use VMnet2 as the management network on the virtual routers:
- Under the node configuration, you have the option to statically configure the management IP. I try to statically set the management IP addresses instead of having them dynamically assigned by the software. This allows for more deterministic accessibility:
