Virtualbox-Based Lab on Windows or MacOS¶

Virtualbox-based Vagrant lab is the only option if you want to run netlab directly on Windows or MacOS (you could also run them within a Ubuntu VM):

netlab commands will create Ansible inventory and Vagrant configuration
Vagrant will create virtual networks within the VirtualBox environment and start network devices as virtual machines within VirtualBox
Ansible will connect to the network devices and configure them

VirtualBox-based architecture

The environment is pretty easy to set up:

Install Virtualbox (might require fiddling with BIOS setup on Ubuntu bare-metal installations)
Install Vagrant
Install netlab Python package with pip3 install networklab
Install Ansible [1] and device-specific requirements.
Test the installation with netlab test virtualbox command

Warning

We don’t test netlab on Windows and have no experience with Windows Subsystem for Linux. It might work, but if it doesn’t, you’re on your own[2]. Running your lab in a Ubuntu VM running on Windows might be a better option.

Creating a New Lab¶

To create a new lab:

Create lab topology file in an empty directory. Use provider: virtualbox in the lab topology to select the virtualbox virtualization provider.
Execute netlab up

Testing the Installation¶

The easiest way to test your installation is to use the netlab test command. If you prefer to do step-by-step tests, or if you don’t want to install Ansible, use this recipe:

Create an empty directory and topology.yml file with the following contents within that directory:

---
defaults:
  device: cumulus

nodes: [ s1, s2, s3 ]
links: [ s1-s2, s2-s3, s1-s2-s3 ]

Execute netlab up --no-config to create configuration files and start the lab without configuring network devices (that step would require Ansible)
Connect to the Cumulus VX devices with vagrant ssh
Destroy the lab with netlab down

Creating Vagrant Boxes¶

Vagrant relies on boxes (prepackaged VM images). The following Vagrant boxes are automatically downloaded from Vagrant Cloud when you’re using them for the first time in your lab topology:

Virtual network device	Vagrant box name
Cumulus VX	CumulusCommunity/cumulus-vx:4.4.0
Cumulus VX 5.0 (NVUE)	CumulusCommunity/cumulus-vx:5.0.1
Generic Linux	generic/ubuntu2004

You must download Arista vEOS and Nexus 9300v images from the vendor website (requires registration) and install them with the vagrant box add filename –name boxname command. You’ll find build recipes for other network devices on codingpackets.com.

You have to use the following box names when installing or building the Vagrant boxes:

Virtual network device	Vagrant box name
Arista vEOS	arista/veos
Cisco IOSv	cisco/iosv
Cisco CSR 1000v	cisco/csr1000v
Cisco Nexus 9300v	cisco/nexus9300v
Juniper vSRX 3.0	juniper/vsrx3

Notes:

Arista rarely ships the latest software version as a Vagrant box. You’ll usually have to build a Vagrant box to have an up-to-date EOS version.
Vagrantfile created by netlab create or netlab up sets up port forwarding for SSH (22), HTTP (80), and NETCONF (830), but the corresponding Ansible inventory contains only ansible_port (SSH). You could edit the final inventory by hand, add an extra file to host_vars, or fix the netlab code. Should you decide to do the latter, please get in touch with us in advance to discuss the necessary data structures.
If you want to add other network devices, build your own Vagrant boxes and modify the system topology-defaults.yml file or user defaults (see adding new virtualization provider for an existing device for more details).