Use Cisco VIRL to Avoid Making Network Change Mistakes
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I use Cisco VIRL to not only emulate existing network topologies in my environment but it also allows me to create new network topologies in a lab environment. This is immensely valuable as it allows me to lab a specific scenario so that I may better gauge the impact of said change. This is also extremely useful whenever I'm designing or proposing a new solution to my company. It allows me to be very familiar with the new design topology and it's inner workings. Cisco VIRL has also been very helpful when troubleshooting certain scenarios. I can test a particular fix in a lab environment before actually implementing in production. This helps me understand the specific intended outcome of said change.
Pros
- It allows for labbing complex environment topologies
- Interconnecting virtual nodes, which emulate network appliances, is extremely easy and intuitive
- Assuming you meet the minimum hardware requirements to run the virtual images, the nodes run relatively fast
Cons
- Better support for multi-vendor labs. Since Cisco VIRLs uses KVM as its hypervisor, not all vendor images will be fully supported in the Cisco VIRL/CML environment. For these particular use cases, it's sometimes better to use GNS3 or EVE-NG.
- Since there are several free offerings out there that allow you to emulate network appliances (especially Cisco IOS based devices), I would love to see Cisco offer more cost-effective alternatives to engineers over their current pricing model.
Return on Investment
- It has allowed me to avoid mistakes when implementing changes on Cisco devices
- It has allowed me to better plan new network change implementations
- It has allowed me to be more confident in my network designs by providing me with a predictive model where I can gauge the effect that certain changes and new technology features will have on my network
Usability
Alternatives Considered
GNS3 and EVE-NG LTD
Other Software Used
EVE-NG LTD, GNS3
