Throughout the labs sections of this site, I would like to share my experiences as I explore various vendors virtualised offerings for use in the lab and proof of concept. Previously I have always done labs the old fashioned with physical kit, and still this would seem the best if not only way to practice layer 2 technologies which are specific to hardware asics, but for pretty much everything else, virtual has got to be the way to go. The new CCIE RS v5 is clearly a testament to this, where previously it was only the TS section that was virtual. A virtual lab enables huge complex multi-vendor topologies, previously not possible to create with physical hardware.

The virtual labs will be created on a Dell R410 server running 64bit Windows 2012, using a combination of Oracle Virtualbox and VMware workstation 10.  I’d previously used the free ESX bare metal hypervisor, but lacked the ability to use virtual serial ports, a necessity for appliances such as the ASRv where the console output is not rendered to the ESX console screen.

As time allows i will be posting my how-to-guides, but as i’ve just discovered working through a fairly simple HP Simware lab, it takes longer than expected.

Please feel free to question me or correct me on any of the information posted.