NX-OS Virtual Lab

Today I downloaded the CSR1000V OVA file. It’s available in the Cisco Software Download webpage if you have a Cisco login with enough privileges.

Once downloaded we can deploy it in our ESXi box so we can lab and test this awesome device.

I’ll not show how to install an ESXi machine as there is plenty of information available on the web.

Let’s deploy the appliance in our virtual infrastructure:

Open our vSphere client software and connect to your ESXi box. Let’s go to the menu, File, Deploy OVF template.

Browse the folder where you have the OVA file and click next. Now we see the details of the appliance, click next.

Let’s choose the name of our router. In my case as I already have one deployed I’ll name it CSR-2. Is up to you. Click next.

Now we choose the amount of resources we’ll need. Once started the router will run with less than 1GB of RAM, but it does need more to get started. Click next.

Choose the storage schema to use. Most of the amount will be unused so we can set it to dynamic and let the disk grow on demand. Next.

Choose the network connections the router will have. Those are mappings to the networks we created in our ESXi box. Next.

Review the resume and finish. The appliance is ready to go!

Note that maybe we have to edit the settings of the machine if we need to update the amount of RAM, the network connections or something like that. In that case I received an error message about the VM version. What I did was download the .vmx configuration file, edit it, and then upload it again to the VM folder in the ESXi storage. Then remove the machine from the inventory and add it again. Easy task.

Now we can start lab tests and configurations with our appliance. Of course we can deploy the OVA many times so we can put together a fairly complex topology.

We can also enable serial over network connection so we will have console connection to this router without having to connect first to the vSphere client.