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This is the thread for setting up home labs on a goon budget; where cheeto stained fingers meet enterprise networking YOU DO NOT NEED TO GO BUY A DELL POWEREDGE TO RUN VM'S! THEY'RE NOISY, HOT, POWER HUNGRY, AND NOISY. Seriously, you'd be better off with a quad i5/i7 and a lot of RAM. I. Where do I get started?! Right! This depends on what you want to work on. Do you want to work on.. Networks: There are a few ways to do this - via Packet Tracer from Cisco, VIRL from Cisco (New and untested by me so far but runs all Cisco images, not just IOS), and the most popular - GNS3. We'll focus on GNS3 - You install the all-in-one software which provides everything needed to emulate network devices except for the router images. Those you will have to legitimately get from the Cisco site (CCO Login required and tied to a service contract) or you can it (don't ask where to download them in this thread,however you could ask what version of image you should use). It should be noted that switches can't 100% be emulated, however I will cover workarounds later on in the thread. You can however emulate ASA firewalls and routers, and even tie them to your NIC so that the router/ASA are reachable from the internet! With enough desktop memory you can run some really big virtualized networks: Systems: System can be emulated with VMware ESXi or Workstation / Microsoft Hypervisor / Oracle VM VirtualBox. You would install one of those products and from there you can install virtual machines. You would need to an ISO of your target operating system and install it on a blank virtual machine. If you don't have a spare server/workstation to install ESX on, you can run ESX inside of a VM like you would any other virtualized OS, then build VM's into that, effectively making the inception version of server virtualization Both: Totally doable! Virtualization is cool, and with it you can tie virtual adapters into GNS3 and emulate hosts / Cisco Call Managers / ACS / German Dungeon Porn webservers or whatever else tickles your fancy. II. Requirements Any modern PC will do, but for virtualization you generally want to have over 4GB of RAM and a multi-core processor - for multiple server or network device virtualizations you'll want to have 16+ GB (in the above GNS3 network I had to upgrade from 16GB to 32GB to support it) III. Do I need physical hardware for the XXX exam or can I just use virtualized hardware? For most entry/mid-level exams, you could virtualize the whole thing for your test bed. The CCNA can definitely be fully virtualized, the CCNP can be half virtualized (switches have their own dedicated exam and you can't emulate all of the config/commands used on the test). For microsoft/RHCE..I would assume so unless someone wants to prove me wrong. I've only taken up to the MCSA and I can't see why any of that can't be virtualized fully. There are caveats, you can't virtualize a full wireless network so the CCNA Wireless track wouldn't be helpful here except for core routing, and the CCNA Voice is mostly able to be produced in VM/GNS3 but there are some features only a voice card in a router can deliver (hold music for example) If anything I would get a cheap enterprise switch like a 2950, 2960, or 3750 off ebay for $100+. Just note that enterprise hardware tends to be LOUD and power hungry and at least for servers doesn't offer much if any of a benefit. IV. Networking Gotchas Sometimes poo poo stops working in GNS3, like even though two routers are directly connected and configured correctly, you can't ping across. When in doubt, shutdown/start the routers (but make sure you save the config first!) Switching. It doesn't work with GNS3 because switches use a dedicated piece of hardware to make layer 2 decisions called ASIC's, and GNS3 can't emulate an ASIC. I assume VIRL will be able to because Cisco is boss but VIRL costs money, and goons can't afford anything. The workarounds: - Use a 3725 IOS image and add NM-16ESW modules to the virtual hardware in GNS3. This gives you 16 switchports and a few switch configuration changes but nothing deep (e.g.: etherchannel or dot1x), the good thing about this switch is this is the most basic "multilayer switch" which are very important in Campus (e.x.: Enterprise) Network Design topologies - Use the built in "ethernet switch" in GNS3, all it does is move packets between the same vlan or dot1q trunks V. Server VM Gotchas Clock rate syncing on RHEL5 and older versions of Windows. Not a problem if VMware tools are installed (or elevator=deadline in Linux, but potentially an issue). VI. poo poo you can do Okay so you get VMware ESXi installed on a stolen Dell R720 but now what? Well my first step would be to connect it to a spare NIC on another server/desktop running GNS3 and tie that NIC into GNS3 along with your home network NIC, configure an emulated router to be configured on both interfaces and baby you got yourself a stew! No seriously you now have the most barebones small business network ever and just the tipping point of the poo poo you can do to make yourself a useful person to society! For the non-networking people, I guess you could just set up a shitload of Windows 2008 R2 or Linux servers and make yourself a AD / DNS / CA authority, tie all your home computers to the domain and lock mom out of farmville when you get grounded. Sepist fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Aug 7, 2013 |
# ? Jul 25, 2013 22:54 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 05:36 |
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More info regarding enterprise hardware for your home labDilbert As gently caress posted:I was about to go to bed but my sperg kicked in, OP here you go Erkenntnis posted:Getting into the CCNA world essentially from scratch can be challenging, and learning about the different cisco models / features is almost part of the experience itself. Sepist fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Aug 27, 2013 |
# ? Jul 25, 2013 22:55 |
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This might be handy for me, I'm debating whether to go sink all the way into networking (I have background in it and have trained for CCNA a few times, but haven't bothered getting the cert) or just keep it as a handy secondary skill.
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# ? Jul 26, 2013 00:34 |
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I'll chuck in some Virtual stuff this weekend, gotta finish up my IT thread rewrite first
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# ? Jul 26, 2013 00:59 |
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Good work, bookmarking this.
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# ? Jul 26, 2013 01:04 |
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Think long and hard before buying used enterprise stuff for a lab, it tends to be loud and power hungry and at least for servers doesn't offer much if any of a benefit.
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# ? Jul 26, 2013 02:03 |
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I'd suggest refurb 2950/2960 (2 or 3) + GNS3 would really be all you'd need to easily lab anything in the CCNA curriculum, and a hell of a lot of the CCNP exam too. PacketTracer is a pretty good learning tool in that the learning curve is a lot lower than GNS3 + Wireshark, and it makes a fairly good attempt at emulating switching for study. It can't be hooked up to external networks/equipment however, but it does provide a good visualisation of the flow of things like STP, CDP etc. You should also be able to pick up 1760 series routers with serial interfaces pretty cheap if you wanted to. I'm fortunate enough to have a bunch of ISR G2 stuff laying around/in stock to play with for a lab, but I've never had the opportunity to play with anything more than that (4500+ etc).
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# ? Jul 26, 2013 02:12 |
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I bought a Cisco 3550 on eBay for like $70 when I was studying for my CCNA. I plugged it in once and it sounded like a harrier jet. Proceeded to use Packet Tracer and the Cisco Learning Labs the rest of the way, which were pretty decent. https://learningnetworkstore.cisco.com/market/prod/listSubCatLearnLab.se.work?TRGT=85&/nxt/rcrs/=2559#.UfHNMo2fgeM
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# ? Jul 26, 2013 02:15 |
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Posting my Lab FOCUS VMware Lab setup Lab Machine: Mobo: Super micro H8SGL CPU: 6128 Memory: 40GB Ripjaw ram Nics: 2 -frebee's- GT550 Storage _______________ 3x250GB refurbed drives 1x120GB drives virtual freenas ZFS server 4.5GB ram, 20GbZlog and 20GB L2ARC _______________ ESX hosts 2vCPU's 8GB ram 5vNICS ISCSI over ZFS _______________ DC 2008R@ CA/DNS/DHCP/AD/FS/SQL vCenter Vmware services Cost: 997 Dilbert As FUCK fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Aug 27, 2013 |
# ? Jul 26, 2013 02:24 |
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So your ESX hosts are virtual? I didn't even realize that was possible. e:Sepist, feel free to take anything out of my post in the other thread you want to add. I didn't even see this thread when I first posted it. sudo rm -rf fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Jul 26, 2013 |
# ? Jul 26, 2013 02:51 |
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Erkenntnis posted:So your ESX hosts are virtual? I didn't even realize that was possible. I have Hyper-V and vmware running virtual on virtual. Yes it works performance is somewhat degraded but completely workable for labs
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# ? Jul 26, 2013 03:03 |
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My home lab consists of 2x AMD Athlon x2 era dual core machines. One with 6x HDDs and 4GB of ECC RAM running openindiana for storage, and one with 8GB of RAM running ESXi 5.0. I can spin up a shitload of VMs and if they swap it's a bit slow but livable for a lab, and hey, I have a ton of space for my files. edit: cost, excluding HDDs was like $400 or something obscenely low.
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# ? Jul 26, 2013 03:23 |
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Hey CC just thought I'd drop in and...wait what's all this talk about computers
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# ? Jul 26, 2013 14:50 |
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Updated the OP, thanks bros
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# ? Jul 26, 2013 15:58 |
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Linked in the OP of the cert thread.
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# ? Jul 26, 2013 16:04 |
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I'm really excited about VIRL being released possibly this Summer. Some are saying it's going to be free and some saying that it is going to be a paid VM appliance product. I'm just excited to start learning the Nexus OS.
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# ? Jul 26, 2013 16:26 |
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I just saw a video on youtube of a demonstration of VIRL. WTH, there is no configuration of anything. Everything is automated. So is the future of the CCIE going to obsolete? I seriously thought that VIRL was going to be a Packet Tracer + GNS3 awesomeness.
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# ? Jul 29, 2013 14:35 |
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ElvisG posted:I just saw a video on youtube of a demonstration of VIRL. WTH, there is no configuration of anything. Everything is automated. So is the future of the CCIE going to obsolete? Not remotely. You still need a relatively competent network engineer to deal with the logical configuration of the network. VIRL is meant to make it easier to lab difficult configurations.
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# ? Jul 29, 2013 22:50 |
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I have a dell cs24-ty with dual x5570 2.93 ghz processors and 32gb of ram which I paid like $300 for. Its been a lot of fun but I need to upgrade the a storage. Also one day I want to colocate it so I can run game servers from it.
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# ? Jul 30, 2013 09:29 |
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1000101 posted:Not remotely. You still need a relatively competent network engineer to deal with the logical configuration of the network. VIRL is meant to make it easier to lab difficult configurations. Not to mention the multi vendor environment we live in. They do seem open to the idea of running other virtualised platforms within VIRL however and that could be a huge boon.
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# ? Jul 30, 2013 12:58 |
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work was tossing out some 2950s and 2948Gs so I grabbed them, now to actually do something with them.
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# ? Aug 2, 2013 01:30 |
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I think this may be the best option for a GNS3 question (maybe?) Every time I drop a router on the sim or test the router image, I get blue screened to oblivion by Windows 7 Home. I catch a glimpse of the cmd prompt running for something and then everything explodes. Any tips?
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# ? Aug 2, 2013 03:55 |
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Judge Schnoopy posted:I think this may be the best option for a GNS3 question (maybe?) Have you tried another router image?
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# ? Aug 2, 2013 12:15 |
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This may be a dumb question, but I figured I'd mention it since this thread now exists. I recently got some gear together for a lab. (I don't know if I will ever even take the CCNA exams, but I enjoy playing around). I have 2x2950 switches and 2x1760 routers. I bought these all used from Amazon Marketplace. They all currently have ios loaded on them, and I'm worried about losing that. Does it make sense to set up a tftp server on a local machine and back up the ios images before I do anything else? (Or is this not really an issue and should I not really worry about losing my ios images?)
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# ? Aug 2, 2013 18:02 |
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In order to lose the IOS images you'd have to physically damage the equipment.
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# ? Aug 2, 2013 18:12 |
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psydude posted:Have you tried another router image? I've tried multiple, each with the same result. Even with the image file blank (no image selected) if I select 'test image' it gives me the blue screen. That leads me to believe it's gns3 causing my troubles. The program works fine without any routers added but then it's kind of useless.
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# ? Aug 2, 2013 18:18 |
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psydude posted:In order to lose the IOS images you'd have to physically damage the equipment. Ahh okay. I thought that might be the case, but I figured I'd ask. I wasn't sure if they could become easily corrupted or anything. (Being an Enterprise Windows admin will do that to you ) Thanks for the help!
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# ? Aug 2, 2013 18:24 |
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If you are running windows you can always use http://tftpd32.jounin.net/ for a super easy tftp server. We use it a work to push IOS updates to some of our older switches. Super easy, just double click an exe and go. Close out the program when you're done
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# ? Aug 2, 2013 18:35 |
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smokmnky posted:If you are running windows you can always use http://tftpd32.jounin.net/ for a super easy tftp server. We use it a work to push IOS updates to some of our older switches. Super easy, just double click an exe and go. Close out the program when you're done awesome! Thanks for the tip
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# ? Aug 2, 2013 18:37 |
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Judge Schnoopy posted:I've tried multiple, each with the same result. Even with the image file blank (no image selected) if I select 'test image' it gives me the blue screen. That leads me to believe it's gns3 causing my troubles. The program works fine without any routers added but then it's kind of useless. I'd try posting on the GNS3 forums. They're pretty helpful. I also remember reading somewhere that having the wrong amount of memory assigned to the IOS image can cause serious issues, but it doesn't sound like that's the case. It may actually be a problem with DyanamIPs.
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# ? Aug 2, 2013 18:52 |
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Closing on earning my CCNA this month I finally wanted to have my own lab mainly for fun. I have a couple of 2950s and one 2600 router on the way. I'm also going to order a 871w which is basically a home router but with full IOS functionality on it. Cheap for what it does though I wish it had N capability.I like the idea of a practical home lab which is what a device like this represents I also think I'll use the IOS more often as a result.
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# ? Aug 3, 2013 19:43 |
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Sepist posted:This is the thread for setting up home labs on a goon budget; where cheeto stained fingers meet enterprise networking Sepist posted:Systems: System can be emulated with VMware ESX or Workstation / Microsoft Hypervisor / Oracle VM VirtualBox. You would install one of those products and from there you can install virtual machines. You would need to an ISO of your target operating system and install it on a blank virtual machine. If you don't have a spare server/workstation to install ESX on, you can run ESX inside of a VM like you would any other virtualized OS, then build VM's into that, effectively making the inception version of server virtualization Sepist posted:V. Server VM Gotchas Sepist posted:For the non-networking people, I guess you could just set up a shitload of Windows 2008 R2 servers and make yourself a AD / DNS / CA authority, tie all your home computers to the domain and lock mom out of farmville when you get grounded. Linux. You absolutely do not need WIndows for DNS, DHCP, LDAP, and Kerberos (though you obviously do for AD), but hey. Dilbert As gently caress posted:virtual freenas ZFS server 4.5GB ram, 20GbZlog and 20GB L2ARC Dilbert As gently caress posted:DC 2008R@ Why is one of your ESXi boxes addressed by IP when you have DNS?
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# ? Aug 4, 2013 00:07 |
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evol262 posted:Linux. You absolutely do not need WIndows for DNS, DHCP, LDAP, and Kerberos (though you obviously do for AD), but hey. Ahem, Samba4
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# ? Aug 4, 2013 03:01 |
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Thanks, I updated the OP a little bit.
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# ? Aug 5, 2013 20:19 |
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SamDabbers posted:Ahem, Samba4 I was under the impression that you still need a Windows environment to do anything useful with AD, unless the Samba guys have created a meaningful way to edit/apply GPOs and anything else which makes AD practical.
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# ? Aug 5, 2013 20:27 |
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I suppose I should clarify that you don't need Windows Server in your environment to do AD if you use Samba4. You're correct; you still need a Windows client with the server management tools to administer the Samba4 Domain Controller. Then again, what's the point of using AD if you don't have a Windows client to manage in the first place?
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# ? Aug 5, 2013 22:58 |
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The Samba team had a web server to perform AD servitude but sanity shone through and they realized they're not web developers and removed it.
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# ? Aug 5, 2013 23:42 |
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If you are planning on making a network lab specfically for networking, then creating an NMS server is a good first step, in the enterprise as well as the lab. FTP/TFTP Server Logging Server NTP Server DHCP/DNS/etc. Management Portal Server/Console Server All of these can and should be the same device and basically think of it as the entry point to your network. You will consolidate all logs, backup all images, and use it as your one stop shop for management and learning. Also just learning how to correctly setup and deploy all of those features/services is a great way to start to get into the more interesting parts of IT.
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# ? Aug 6, 2013 16:39 |
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SamDabbers posted:I suppose I should clarify that you don't need Windows Server in your environment to do AD if you use Samba4. You're correct; you still need a Windows client with the server management tools to administer the Samba4 Domain Controller. Then again, what's the point of using AD if you don't have a Windows client to manage in the first place? For some people, it's easier to just use AD than to get DNS, DHCP, LDAP, and Kerberos all on the same page. I mean, I don't really see the point either, but it happens. Powercrazy posted:If you are planning on making a network lab specfically for networking, then creating an NMS server is a good first step, in the enterprise as well as the lab. Ask yourself honestly: "does my network need a bastion host?" The answer is probably no. Even if it does, there's no reason for DHCP/DNS to be there. Syslog should be inside the network (not on a bastion). [T]FTP should be inside the network unless you're providing public FTP services (it's 2013, don't do this).
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# ? Aug 6, 2013 16:55 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 05:36 |
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I'm talking specifically about a lab setup. If you are doing your CCNA and you are planning on going further, then learning what all those services are and how to deploy them is a good idea. Obviously in the enterprise many of those services will be separate especially as the environment scales. For a home lab, all of that stuff can be deployed on a single router.
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# ? Aug 6, 2013 17:12 |