Is there such a thing as a free to use, preferably packaged for Debian, simulator of a, say, Cisco or Juniper router I could use for demonstrations purposes for corresponding and existing Ansible modules?
I teach Ansible classes and occasionally get questions about configuring network equipment. I’d like to be able to demo without actually having access to a real router for doing so.
Is there such a beast, even if it offers only a fraction of a device’s capabilities? I’m thinking connection plugin, and configuring something on such a “device”.
There is always hosting Cisco CML locally on your machine. You’d need to buy a license for $200, install it and get a lab topology set up so that your local PC could talk to the CML environment. It can take some elbow grease for sure.
There is also Cisco hosted CML. You can find that info here.
Hopefully that takes you to the right webpage, if not give this one a try Devnetsandbox.
You’ll need a Ciscodevnet account, but this one is free. The only caveat is you need to reserve a lab and these can be kinda buggy in my humble opinion.
You could use EveNG or GNS3 as well, but those can be their own beast. I would honestly go with Cisco CML before GNS3 any day.
Thank you, @Jonathan. That’s actually quite nicely done and the Ansible blurbs make quite a bit of sense and are well written. I might actually learn how to control an iOS device.
(Disclaimer: I’m very familiar with Ansible but am not at all a networking guy.)
