Introducing VIRL Personal Edition

Posted on 2 mins read

This is an internal Cisco tool which is so useful – that I am really pleased that it is finally available for public consumption.

VIRL Stands for Virtual Internet Routing Lab

What Is VIRL?

**_VIRL is comprehensive network design and simulation platform. VIRL includes a powerful graphical user interface for network design and simulation control, a configuration engine that can build complete Cisco configuration at the push of a button, Cisco virtual machines running same network operating systems as used in Cisco’s physical routers and switches, all running on top of OpenStack. virl_**

How Does VIRL Work?

VIRL uses the Linux KVM hypervisor and OpenStack as its virtual machine control layer, with a powerful API enabling the creation and operation of VMs in a simulated network topology. Users design their network using the VM Maestro design and control interface, with network elements such as virtual routers, switches and servers. The design is translated into a set of virtual machines running real Cisco network operating systems.

What Does VIRL Offer?

Design, learn and test with virtual machine running real Cisco network operating systems – IOS, IOS XE, IOS XR  and NX-OS as well as virtual machine running 3rd party operating systems. Build highly-accurate models of real-world or future networks, study the behaviour and configuration of routing protocols, break and fix your network and understand how to troubleshoot with a powerful integrated platform.

The original information can be found here

Cisco VIRL Personal Edition annual subscription license provides a scalable, extensible network design and simulation environment for several Cisco Network Operating Systems for students. This includes IOSv, IOS XRv, NX-OSv, CSR1000v as well as third party images such as Ubuntu Linux.

Educational pricing is available for this product for college students, parents buying for a college student, or teachers, homeschool teachers and staff of all grade levels – limited to one purchase.

VIRL enables users to:

  • Build highly-accurate models of real-world or future networks.
  • Learn and test with ‘real’ versions of Cisco network operating systems – IOSv, IOS XRv, NX-OSv and CSR1000v.
  • Integrate virtual network simulations with real network environments.
  • The download includes VIRL Personal Edition 1.0 Pre-Release software with a single-user annual license to manage up to 15 Cisco nodes.