Recently, my license for Cisco VIRL expired and I wanted to test alternatives to have a lab on my laptop.

I got used to install the client and the server parts of VIRL on my laptop, to not have to worry about connectivity when I want to do a lab or a demo to a colleague or a customer. With the exceptional opportunities of the different cloud solutions actually, this is probably not the best solution, but it suits me well for a small lab and I’d like to continue to have this possibility.

So, as an alternative to Cisco VIRL, I had two obvious choices: GNS3 or EVE-NG.

For running one of the three solutions (including VIRL) on a laptop under Windows 10, it is recommended and documented to use VMware Workstation. But have a problem here, I use Microsoft Hyper-V for other VMs tests, as well as for Docker for Windows. And VMware Workstation does not coexist well with Microsoft Hyper-V on the same machine. For example, to start a VM under VMware workstation when Hyper-V start as a service, I must first stop Hyper-V, do a reboot, and then I can start the VM under VMware. Not really sexy.

So, I searched a documentation or a blog post about how to install and run GNS3 or EVE-NG under Hyper-V. Because, after all, this is just an Ubuntu server running on a VM.

For GNS3, I found a pretty good blog, here: https://cisco.zacandsarah.com/node/1
And after two hours I could run my first simulation without any problem. (Note: this blog does not respond from time to time, and currently it seems down).

Then, I wanted to test the same with EVE-NG. In this case, did not find any documentation or post of someone who has already installed it under Hyper-V. I threw a bottle to the sea (Twitter) and got a promising answer that EVE-NG has been successfully installed on Microsoft Azure (see it on YouTube here, a great videos from @theLANtamer). So, I thought, let’s try on Hyper-V!

1.    Ubuntu installation

Some basic prerequisites:

• Your laptop must have Hyper-V already installed and a vSwitch already created with Internet access.
• The system requirements for EVE-NG are here: http://www.eve-ng.net/documentation/installation/system-requirement
• The system requirements for Ubuntu server and the installation guide are here: https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/tutorial-install-ubuntu-server?_ga=2.142146226.1499346393.1542550531-1914365158.1542019603#0
• For information, I made this install with a Lenovo T450s laptop with Windows 10 pro and 12GB of RAM. So, I assigned 8GB of RAM and 4vCPU to the server. This is probably the minimum to run IOU/IOL and Dynamips images, and insufficient for topology with CSR1000V and/or Nexus-9k. Of course, you must adapt these values according to your own hardware.

Let’s create the VM under Hyper-V and make the Ubuntu install:

1. Download Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS ISO (be careful,  Ubuntu 18 is NOT supported): http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04/ubuntu-16.04.5-server-amd64.iso

2. Create a new VM under Hyper-V:
   • Click on “New Virtual Machine” on Hyper-V
   • Name: EVE-NG (you can use any other name, but we will need this name after for a PowerShell change to activate Intel VT-x or AMD-V, so avoid special characters)
   • Generation 2
   • Startup Memory: I have 12GB on my laptop, so I assigned 8GB, but it depends on your own machine. With dynamic memory enabled.
   • Networking: use a vSwitch already existing, connected to the Internet. You must have Internet access during the installation, for the updates.
   • Hard-Disk: create a virtual hard-disk, I assigned 300GB. It’s a lot but if you have many images on EVE-NG, you don’t need to resize the disk later. So up to you.
   • Install the operating system from a bootable image file: and specify the Ubuntu ISO image you just downloaded.
   • Click next, then finish. Hyper-V will now create your VM.
   • Once created, on Hyper-V, select your VM, right-click and choose Settings…
   • Go under Security and disable Secure Boot. Otherwise the boot with the ISO will not start:

2. • Go under Processor and increase the number of virtual processors, according to your hardware.
   • Click OK.
   • Connect to the VM and start it. The Ubuntu installation will start, with this message:

(Click on the image to see it full-size)

3. Ubuntu Setup:
   • Install Ubuntu Server (just hit enter)
   • Language: English
   • Location: United States
   • Configure keyboard: Choose your keyboard or use automatic detection. Having the right keyboard will help you to type correctly the password later.
   • If the network  of your vSwitch have DHCP, the installation continue automatically, if not please setup IP/mask/GW and DNS IPs manually
   • Hostname: eve-ng
   • Domain name: anything you want, or example.com
   • Full name of user: anything makes you happy
   • Username of your account: user (this will be used first time login in to Ubuntu)
   • Password: enter password, confirm enter password again
   • Use weak password: YES (you will see it only if you entered a weak password above)
   • Encrypt your home directory: NO
   • Configure Clock: if your DNS IP is set right, time zone is set automatically
   • Partition disks: use entire disk and setup LVM
   • Partition disks: As you have only one disk, just click continue
   • Write changes to disk and create LVM: YES
   • Amount of volume: leave the entire offered size
   • Force UEFI Installation: YES
   • Write changes to disk: YES
   • Http proxy: NO. Except if you are using a proxy, then configure it for internet reachability.
   • Configuring task: Install security updates automatically
   • Software selection: IMPORTANT: add Open SSH server to the selection (mark with spacebar).
   • Install GRUB boot loader: YES (must be automatic)
   • At the end of the installation: reboot

2. EVE-NG pre-installation

After the reboot, stay on the Hyper-V terminal of your VM to change some first settings. After that, we will use SSH.

This correspond, with some small changes, to the Phase 2 of the bare-install of EVE-NG documentation, here.

1. After the reboot, login with your user created during the installation part and get root access:

Login: your_user
Password: your_password
Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.5 TLS ...
$ sudo su
[sudo] password for your_user: your_password

2. Change the root password. Here I use “eve” but of course you can choose your own root password:

root@eve-ng:~# sudo passwd root
Enter new UNIX password: eve
Retype new UNIX password: eve
passwd: password updated successfully

3. Change the hosts file to look as below. I still not see the goal of this change but it’s on the documentation:
   (If you don’t know VI, you can use nano or another editor of your choice. To install nano, type: apt-get install nano )

root@eve-ng:~# vi /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.1.1       eve-ng.example.com      eve-ng

4. Allow the root user to access via SSH [optional]:

root@eve-ng:~# vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Change:
PermitRootLogin prohibit-password
To:
PermitRootLogin yes

5. Save settings (:wq) and restart the sshd service:

root@eve-ng:~# service ssh restart

3. EVE-NG community installation

Before the EVE-NG community installation, we need to check the Internet access and the domain-name resolution, with the command:

root@eve-ng:~# ping icmp.canireachthe.net
PING icmp.canireachthe.net (209.206.55.10) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from icmp.meraki.com (209.206.55.10): icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=176 ms
64 bytes from icmp.meraki.com (209.206.55.10): icmp_seq=2 ttl=51 time=177 ms
64 bytes from icmp.meraki.com (209.206.55.10): icmp_seq=3 ttl=51 time=176 ms
^C

Do you like this host (canireachthe.net)? Another smart Cisco Meraki idea 🙂

Now, we are ready for the install, be sure you are logged as rood and type:

root@eve-ng:~# wget -O - http://www.eve-ng.net/repo/install-eve.sh | bash -i

All the installation steps are in this script, there is nothing to do. Go get yourself a coffee and relax.

After a while, the installation is complete, reboot the server:

root@eve-ng:~# reboot

Go back to Hyper-V, right-click on your VM and click Connect…

Click start. During the boot, you will see this warning message on the console:

neither Intel VT-x or AMD-V found on Hyper-V

We will solve this later.

Now, you can follow this guide for the first boot configuration: http://www.eve-ng.net/index.php/documentation/howto-s/65-howto-configure-eve-during-first-boot

Once done, come back here for the next few steps.

If you have not done so already – this was at the end of the guide for the first boot configuration – do an upgrade to latest version, and then shutdown the server:

root@eve-ng:~# apt-get update
(... skipped ...)
root@eve-ng:~# apt-get upgrade
(... skipped ...)
root@eve-ng:~# shutdown now

Finally, we must enable nested virtualization. As I know, the only way to do this is with PowerShell. So, open a PowerShell prompt as administrator on your PC and write this command:
(Where “EVE-NG” is the name of the VM)

> Set-VMProcessor -VMName "EVE-NG" -ExposeVirtualizationExtensions $True

Now, start your EVE-NG VM again with the Hyper-V console, the message “neither Intel VT-x or AMD-V found on Hyper-V” should not appear anymore.

Now, you should be able to connect to the web interface with HTTP – the IP address of the server should appear in the console, just on top of the login:

Username: admin
Password: eve

Congratulations, your EVE-NG is ready!

4. Next steps: import and use the images

The next steps are to import and use the images. I will not spend too much time on it because there is already a lot of documentation on this subject. But, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Images must be installed on the corresponding directory:
  • /opt/unetlab/addons/dynamips for Dynamips
  • /opt/unetlab/addons/iol/bin for IOL/IOU
  • /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/xxxx for QEMU, where xxx correspond to a naming-convention you can find here.
• The IOS/IOU images need a license. I let you google this point.
• Read the how-to to upload and use the images, this is important: http://www.eve-ng.net/documentation/howto-s
• Fix the permissions issues with the wrapper: /opt/unetlab/wrappers/unl_wrapper -a fixpermissions
• To copy the images from your PC to the VM, you can use SCP. I use Putty pscp.exe
  • Available here: https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/w64/pscp.exe
  • Then the command line to copy the files is pretty simple: pscp foobar.txt your_username@remotehost.edu:/some/remote/directory

Conclusions and other resources

As I wrote at the beginning of this post, with the current possibilities offered by the cloud, at ever lower prices, it is not necessarily useful to have the EVE-NG / GNS3 / VIRL server directly on his machine. Especially that the resources are limited if you want to make a big lab or start few Nexus 9k for example. But, it may be useful to be able to start a small lab in 2 minutes on his own PC, without worrying about Internet connectivity.

For more information, I recommend the following links:

• EVE-NG official site
• Cisco VIRL official site
• GNS3 official site
• David Bombal courses on Udemy (many are on GNS3)
• Thelantamer Twitch Channel and YouTube channel
• Lab-time.it EVE-NG series

Happy labbing!