We will use VIRL to construct our lab. As in the previous chapters, we will put together a lab with multiple routers, a server, and a client. We will use five IOSv network nodes along with two server hosts:
If you are wondering about our choice of IOSv as opposed to NX-OS or IOS-XR and the number of devices, here are a few points for you to consider when you build your own lab:
- Nodes virtualized by NX-OS and IOS-XR are much more memory-intensive than IOS
- The VIRL virtual manager I am using has 8 GB of RAM, which seems enough to sustain nine nodes but could be a bit unstable (nodes changing from reachable to unreachable at random) ...