Hi, excited child here that just discovered EVENG - Ill be donating a few quid if the Cisco images I found are as full featured as I need for CCIE because frankly the product is worth paying for from what I have seen, I am still waiting to find a brick wall limitation. Very cool when youve been stuck with VIRL and GNS for years. Game changing and I am annoyed I only just found out about it.
Regards PC specs, how much RAM do you guys run for large labs (Say CCIE Security v5 size since thats what I am going for) and what sort of CPU? Or - do you rely on a proper server
I've got access to a boatload of compute at work, so will be running my own Vswitch with EVENG and various other stuff attaches to it with remote access from home. However I also want to run small labs at home, just to get used to individual topics locally rather than a full scale lab.
Thanks, Mike
Desktop PC specs running VM Workstation
Moderator: mike
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Sipart
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Re: Desktop PC specs running VM Workstation
Hi Mike. Personally I find running EVE-NG as a bare metal install is the most usable (for all the normal obvious reasons) but if pushed and you have enough RAM and a higher end Intel (i5, i7) CPU then no reason why small and medium labs can't be run on a well running desktop/laptop in VMware workstation/player.
If you are planning on using Cisco Nexus images then I know these use a lot of RAM. The split image Juniper vMX and vQFX and next gen vSRX images are also resource hungry. I tend to stick to the older single image vMX and older v12 vSRX - they do everything I need them to at the moment.
Desktop wise I use a core i5 (couple of generations behind the latest) with 12G RAM on Win10 and EVE is perfectly usable for medium labs in VMware.
Laptop wise I use a core i7 with 32G RAM - but I have issues with this as it is a corporate laptop with corporate anti-virus/end point protection, disk encryption etc so I tend to avoid using it - the system locks up after a while of running EVE with a lab open and I don't have 100% control over the PC so I avoid running it this way - not the EVEs fault obviously.
Bare metal wise I have a couple of old Dell R610s (pushing 8 years old) with dual Xeons, 24GB RAM and a reasonable amount of disk space and I can happily run 7 vMX routers (single Junos v14 image), a couple of switches (one CumulusVX one Cisco) a couple of vSRX routers, two vPCs and two Win7 PCs all participating in a MPLS network (ISIS, RSVP, BGP, route reflector) with Layer 3 VPNs and then a spine and leaf CumulusVX based DC (EVPN, BGP unnumbered, VXLAN on 6 switches and a couple of Cumulus VX images running as servers) with NetQ fabric validation and after the initial hit on CPU when booting the lab up it settles down and the CPU and RAM hit is medium.
Good luck, EVE is great and a whole lot better then GNS3 etc after you get over the initial very quick familiarisation of the GUI, image gathering and setting up your preferred images. Loads of great content on the EVE site and YouTube to help you get going.
Cheers
If you are planning on using Cisco Nexus images then I know these use a lot of RAM. The split image Juniper vMX and vQFX and next gen vSRX images are also resource hungry. I tend to stick to the older single image vMX and older v12 vSRX - they do everything I need them to at the moment.
Desktop wise I use a core i5 (couple of generations behind the latest) with 12G RAM on Win10 and EVE is perfectly usable for medium labs in VMware.
Laptop wise I use a core i7 with 32G RAM - but I have issues with this as it is a corporate laptop with corporate anti-virus/end point protection, disk encryption etc so I tend to avoid using it - the system locks up after a while of running EVE with a lab open and I don't have 100% control over the PC so I avoid running it this way - not the EVEs fault obviously.
Bare metal wise I have a couple of old Dell R610s (pushing 8 years old) with dual Xeons, 24GB RAM and a reasonable amount of disk space and I can happily run 7 vMX routers (single Junos v14 image), a couple of switches (one CumulusVX one Cisco) a couple of vSRX routers, two vPCs and two Win7 PCs all participating in a MPLS network (ISIS, RSVP, BGP, route reflector) with Layer 3 VPNs and then a spine and leaf CumulusVX based DC (EVPN, BGP unnumbered, VXLAN on 6 switches and a couple of Cumulus VX images running as servers) with NetQ fabric validation and after the initial hit on CPU when booting the lab up it settles down and the CPU and RAM hit is medium.
Good luck, EVE is great and a whole lot better then GNS3 etc after you get over the initial very quick familiarisation of the GUI, image gathering and setting up your preferred images. Loads of great content on the EVE site and YouTube to help you get going.
Cheers