Gns3 Workstation

[Jeff]

Ifyou encounter a message in the GNS3-VM where it states that KVM support is not available, even if you have a CPU capable of hardware virtualization (modern Intel and AMD CPUs all support this), please confirm that it has been enabled in your system BIOS/UEFI (consult the documentation supplied by your motherboard manufacturer or PC vendor, to learn how to access this)

Ensure that the path to the gns3server executable is correct (typically C:\Program Files\GNS3 in a default installation), and select a Host binding and Port. Selecting the 127.0.0.1 local loopback address tends to be the most trouble-free option to use as a host binding, but the dropdown menu does contain additional options. Click 'Next'.

The Setup Wizard will detect the presence of the GNS3 VM in VMware Workstation. If the GNS3 VM is not displayed, click the 'Refresh' button and ensure that the VM was imported correctly into VMware Workstation:

GNS3 can decompress IOS images to allow for quicker booting of routers in your GNS3 topologies. This is recommended for a better user experience, as IOS image decompression can take several minutes, even on physical hardware. Click 'Yes' to uncompress the image:

A Default RAM setting is displayed. It is important that you check your Router's minimum memory requirements using the Cisco website. Click the Check for minimum and maximum RAM requirement option:

Select your preferred Network adapters. This is device dependant. With this c3725 image, we can only add adapters to slots 0, 1, and 2, with slot 0 prepopulated with GT96100-FE dual Fast Ethernet adapter. Which adapters you can add, and how many slots you are allowed to install adapters to is device dependent. Click 'Next':

It is important for optimum GNS3 performance that an Idle-PC value be selected. If a green Idle-PC value is NOT shown then click the 'Idle-PC finder' button to find an Idle-PC value.

The Virtualbox developers announced that nested hardware virtualization support was added to Virtualbox 6.0 for desktops/laptops that have AMD CPUs and since 6.1 supports also Intel CPUs. Questions regarding Virtualbox should be directed Virtualbox user forums, and not the GNS3 community forums!

As of GNS3 2.2.3, the issue where users with AMD CPUs wanting to run the GNS3 VM in VMware Workstation needed to install a newer kernel has been resolved! It now works, like it did in past versions, so this workaround is no longer necessary.

I can fix this by opening gns3 and going to Edit > Preferences > VMware > Network and clicking on the Reset button. But when I have to reconfigure it again By clicking on the Configure button, the problem comes back.

I would like to start by saying Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays season to all. In between spending time with my family, decorating the Christmas three and opening presents, I did find some time to play around with my hobby and testing something in the lab.

Beside getting the F5 BIG-IP VE (Virtual Edition), running up VMware (ESXi, Player, Fusion or Workstation) and starting the virtual machine I also wanted to emulate some kind of real environment to test. So, I did build the below topology in GNS3:

GNS3 is version 1.2.1 which works perfect. Why VirtualBox and VMware Workstation? Usually I have no problem to have my VMs in VirtualBox, but I could not successfully import the F5 BIG-IP VE OVA image in VirtualBox. I had to download a trial version of VMware Workstation to install the OVA image.

Hi and thanks for the great post , am trying to do the same

My host is windows 7 64-bit , I faced some issues running the bridge interfaces (cannot create more than one bridge interface) , my question is can i directly connect the cloud (the F5) to gns3 and connect the vmnet interfaces ? I am using gns3 1.1.0

I have spent many hours reading various blog posts and articles in my quest to get the Cisco ASA working in GNS3. Not just working but to a point where it runs stable, be able to save the running configuration, save the project in GNS3 and then reopen it all back up and for the configuration to be there working.

Here are the steps I have successfully used to get the Cisco ASA working correctly in GNS3. For this example I will be assuming you have already added the ASA and a workstation like XP to GNS3 in order to access the ASDM. We will just be working very simply with a single ASA and an virtual XP machine directly connected, as below.

I have encountered disk/flash issues occasionally when saving the running config, Cisco has a built in file check utility to fix these type of issues called the fsck utility. This does automatically run when you boot up the ASA however to manually run it run the following:

Why are we doing this? This software will allow you to simulate having an actual device and actual network setup as opposed to setting up a real test network with actual hardware. We wanted to give you the ability to see how the hardware operates without first having to make the investment in actual hardware. Also, this will give you the ability to perform some tasks that might be difficult to initially setup. We recommend performing these labs using a Microsoft Windows-based PC, but there are builds of the software for Mac-OS and Linux-based workstations, although the setup and configuration of those devices may differ from the step-by step instructions provided here.

The first piece of software we are going to install is GNS3, which is a graphical network simulator program that will allow us to simulate physical MikroTik device(s). Follow the steps below to install GNS3.

Step 2: Once you have registered your account, please login to the website. You can login by following the link here and will be required to login in order to download the required software.

Step 4: Once you are redirected to the download page, select the appropriate version of the software for your machine. We will be installing the Windows version for this demo. We recommend using a Windows based machine for the course and tutorials if possible because other tools that we will use during this course will require a Windows based PC. (You may find substitutes for some of the tools we use for the OS that you are on, but that is outside the scope of this lab.)

Step 5: Before we proceed with the install, we will also need to install Python if it is not already present on our machine. Proceed here to download and install Python

Download Python Python.org. Download the latest version of Python listed.

Step 6: Launch the Python installer and proceed with the installation. I like to add python.exe to the PATH so that it makes it easier to find/launch python and also install with admin privileges.

Step 8: When encountering a new Pip update in the terminal, execute the command python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip to promptly update the package. After upgrading the existing pip tool, close the terminal and restart the system.

Step 10: Once you are redirected to the download page, select the appropriate version of the software for your machine. We will be installing the Windows version for this demo. You will need to create an account if you do not already have one in order to download and install the software. We are going to log in (Broadcom Inc. (Customer) - Sign In) and navigate to the download page.

ProductDownloads - Support Portal - Broadcom support portal

We are downloading the VMWare Workstation Pro 17.0 for Personal Use (Windows) Version 17.5.2 at the time of this release.

Step 13: You may come across this screen requesting permission to install virtual Windows features compability option (Windows Hypervisor Platform) to your machine. Allow VMWare to install the Hypervisor Platform (WHP) Automatically by checking the box shown here and hit Next to continue.

Step 20: You will be asked to choose which components to install. I like to install both the GNS3 WebClient and the GNS3 VM at this point. You will need the GNS3 VM, so its important that you install at least the VM. Hit Next to continue.

Step 23: You will be required to install a few additional tools, the first of which is Npcap. Like us, you may have this tool already installed on your machine, or you may have a newer version of this tool installed on your machine. (The installer unfortuntely installs an older version of this tool and I recommend either updating the tool afterwards, or installing a newer version of the Npcap tool from here (Npcap: Windows Packet Capture Library & Driver). Our recommendation is to pre-install the Npcap library and driver. Our test machine has a newer version of the tool installed, and so we answered this question with a No, do not install the older version of the software.

Step 24: The system will then install the necessary tools to complete the installation of GNS3 onto your workstation. Once completed, we will need one more piece of software, namely the RouterOS image for GNS3 in order to stand up a Mikrotik virtual device. We will discuss installing and configuring the RouterOS image in the next segment of this installation.

Step 26: Upon launching GNS3 you will be presented wit the Setup Wizard. We are going to run our devices in a virtual machine under VMWare Workstation so make sure Run appliances in a virtual machine is checked and then click Next to continue.

Step 29: You will see the following message in GNS3. This is because we need to install the GNS3 VMWare virtual image that was downloaded as part of the application installation process. Click OK. At this point, we are going to navigate back to VMWare Workstation and install the virtual image.

3a8082e126