Cisco Nexus 9000v Vagrant Box for VMware Fusion

The Cisco Nexus 9000v shares the same software image as its hardware counterpart, so it provides a terrific solution for feature testing and/or network automation. The only caveat is the hardware resources required to run it. I recommend a Mac with at least 16GB of memory and a dual-core CPU. Ingredients used in this guide: macOS Mojave (10.14) VMware Fusion 11 Pro Vagrant 2.2.3 VMware provider for Vagrant Cisco Nexus 9000v Switch Steps 1....

February 1, 2019 · 5 min

Cisco IOS XRv Vagrant Box for VMware Fusion

And yet another virtual network appliance to Vagrantize… Ingredients used in this guide: macOS Mojave (10.14) VMware Fusion 11 Pro Vagrant 2.2.3 VMware provider for Vagrant Cisco IOS XRv Router v6.1.3 The Cisco IOS XRV Router image is available as part of your Cisco VIRL subscription. Steps 1. Convert the disk image format type. The Cisco IOS XRv Router is provided in the qcow2 (QEMU) disk image format. The QEMU disk image utility (qemu-img) is required to convert the disk image to the vmdk (VMware) format....

January 6, 2019 · 7 min

FortiGate Vagrant Box for VMware Fusion

Continuing my journey to Vagrantize more virtual network appliances… Ingredients used in this guide: macOS Mojave (10.14) VMware Fusion 11 Pro Vagrant 2.2.2 VMware provider for Vagrant FortiGate-VM The FortiGate VM includes a limited embedded 15-day trial license that supports: 1 CPU maximum 1 GB RAM maximum Low encryption only (no HTTPS administrative access) All features except FortiGuard updates Steps 1. Download and unzip the FortiGate VM deployment package for VMware....

December 26, 2018 · 5 min

Store and retrieve GNS3 images with Azure Blob Storage

This post is a companion to the previous GNS3 with Microsoft Azure post. For many of us, an asymmetrical Internet connection usually equates to a much slower upload than download speed. Specifically, in our case, this results in a time-consuming process of uploading GNS3 image files to our remote gns3server VM instance. What if we need to recreate the disk attached to our gns3server VM instance? Modify the type (i....

October 24, 2018 · 4 min

GNS3 with Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is one of the big three public cloud computing providers for services such as virtual machines (VMs), containers, server-less computing, and machine learning. Azure is a large platform, but we’re focused solely on the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) resources in this guide. The GNS3 architecture is comprised of three primary components: User Interface (UI), Controller, and the (Compute) Server. The Server is the component that puts a strain on computer hardware resources....

September 24, 2018 · 11 min

Store and retrieve GNS3 images with Google Cloud Storage

This post is a companion to the previous GNS3 with Google Compute Engine post. For many of us, an asymmetrical Internet connection usually equates to a much slower upload than download speed. Specifically, in our case, this results in a time-consuming process of uploading GNS3 image files to our remote gns3server VM instance. What if we need to recreate the disk attached to our gns3server VM instance? Modify the type (i....

August 27, 2018 · 3 min

GNS3 with Google Compute Engine

Google Cloud is one of the big three public cloud computing providers for services such as virtual machines (VMs), containers, server-less computing, and machine learning. Google Cloud is a large platform, but we’re focused solely on the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) resources in this guide. The GNS3 architecture is comprised of three primary components: User Interface (UI), Controller, and the (Compute) Server. The Server is the component that puts a strain on computer hardware resources....

August 5, 2018 · 11 min

Compile and install Wireshark on Fedora and Ubuntu Linux

Wireshark is the world’s most popular network analyzer. A network protocol analyzer is usually required to get the deepest visibility in determining network issues. Grabbing the newest Wireshark release for Windows and Mac OS X is easy enough. You just direct your web browser to the Wireshark site to grab it. Things can be a little trickier if using Linux. The Wireshark package listed with most Linux distribution repositories is usually a version or two behind the current stable release....

May 13, 2011 · 4 min

Cisco Security Device Manager on the Mac

Cisco Router and Security Device Manager (SDM) is a Web-based device-management tool that enables you to deploy and manage the services on a Cisco IOS router. Even if you decide to do your initial configuration with the CLI, the Monitoring mode of SDM is a great way to display a graphical real-time pulse of the state of your router. The SDM application can run either as an application installed on your Windows PC or from the router’s flash thru the web browser....

May 8, 2011 · 6 min

Convert AC3 audio to MP3 for XviD files with FFmpeg

I recently had an issue where I wanted to play a movie on one of my portable devices, but the file’s audio stream is encoded in the AC3 (Dolby Digital) format. But of course, the device doesn’t support AC3, so I need to convert it to a compatible format. Handbrake is my go-to tool for media file conversion, but it no longer supports output to XviD – specifically the AVI container....

June 12, 2010 · 3 min