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For testing and research purposes, I know it is possible to emulate Cisco devices (with dynamips) and Juniper ones (via an "Olive", a FreeBSD based system running on qemu) in a GNS3 environment.

Is it possible to emulate other vendor devices (like Brocade ones) in GNS3 or else ?

Benjamin A.
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2 Answers2

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It's like the site says:

  • Dynamips, the well known Cisco IOS emulator.
  • VirtualBox, runs desktop and server operating systems as well as Juniper JunOS.
  • Qemu, a generic open source machine emulator, it runs Cisco ASA, PIX and IPS.

http://www.gns3.net/

you can use these to setup a lab-network.

You can emulate the following hardware :

http://www.gns3.net/hardware-emulated

Bulki
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  • So in answer to the original question, does that mean that it is not possible to emulate other vendors in GNS3? – Craig Sirkin May 18 '13 at 03:38
  • I see that juniper is also possible: http://www.gns3.net/hardware-emulated – Bulki May 18 '13 at 07:56
  • You have simply explained the possibilities with GNS3, consider expanding as per the OPs question to other vendors. – jwbensley May 18 '13 at 12:25
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    @CraigSirkin "it depends". If the other vendors OS can be run in VirtualBox or Qemu, then you can emulate them. i.e. if they have a virtualized appliance(Which they'll likely advertize as being able to run in VMWare, bt Qemu or VirtualBox usually works too), that'll work - but must don't provide that. e.g. you could get Arista and Vyatta in there, but likely not HP. – nos May 20 '13 at 15:13
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What I recommend is to setup a virtualized environment. Either through Vmware workstation or preferably ESXi with vSphere if you have a server to spare. That gives you a very flexible solution.

Add a VM for Dynamips
Add Olives if you like
Add ASA either via Dynamips or separately
Add the Cisco CSR1000v VM
Add a VM for Arista

That makes it easy to run inter vendor labs and you can connect them through the VM network which makes it simple to setup. I have a lab like this now and it's hosted by a friend so a VPN in to a box he setup (virtual) which is my GW. Then I can configure vSphere and anything I like and run it on the server.

If you have a powerful laptop which 8GB RAM or more you can run a lot of stuff directly on your laptop. Most of these things are RAM heavy but not that heavy for the CPU.

Daniel Dib
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