GNS3 : How to download Cisco IOS images and VIRL images. Which is the best? How do you get them?

[Music] now one of the most often asked questions on the genus 3 forums is how do you get access to Cisco images including Cisco viral images in this video I'm going to show you how to download Cisco viral images as well as Cisco iOS images now let me warn you from the beginning you need the right authorization and the right contracts to do this so please don't dislike this video because I'm telling you the legal way to get software neither I nor gns3 can provide Cisco images to you some vendors such as cumulus and Arista make their software available for free you don't have to pay for it you can simply download a trial license but for some of the Cisco images you will need to buy a license to use it so as an example the recommendation today is to use Cisco asav Cisco iosv layer 2 Cisco iOS V those are viral images which you have to have a license for other software such as a 7200 image or a 3660 image can be downloaded directly from the Cisco website if you have an agreement in place with Cisco so as an example if you work for a Cisco partner you'll be able to download the images so again due to legal requirements you have to purchase your own licenses but here I'm going to show you how to download an image from Cisco viral as well as the Cisco software portal so let's get started in the gns3 documentation there is a section called which emulator should I use there's a discussion firstly whether you should use the GS3 VM or not the recommendation is that you do for most cases unless you are creating a basic gns3 topology using a Cisco iOS image and a local dynamips install in other words all you're going to use is the guey and not the genus 3 VM now for Cisco you have choices you can select dynamips which requires a Cisco iOS image or you can use qmu and specifically use viral images such as the iOS V layer 2 and iOS V images as well as asav this is the recommendation it's recommended that you use cumu and with Cisco that you use viral images I'll show you in a moment how to download those IOU is a Cisco internal way of running iOS on Unix it's not publicly released you can't get support from Cisco for this it's also difficult to install and configure so the genus 3 recommendation is that you don't use IOU it's not officially released by Cisco it's buggy it's difficult to configure and Cisco doesn't support it if you want a stable platform and a officially released Cisco images GS3 recommend that you use qmu and the Cisco iOS images so I'll show you now how to download a viral image and then I'll show you where to get ios images so Julian has pointed to this tweet from the viral team showing you that you can download all Cisco virtual machine images through your viral account account by clicking on this link that link is the following and I'll add it below this video so that you can go directly to that link that will take you to your viral account now this is my account I've paid for a viral license so now I can click on download viral and that allows me to download various images such as iosv iOS V layer 2 or asav so as an example if I want the ASA image I simply click on the download link agree to the CSCO terms and download the image so I'm going to accept the license agreement and now my viral image is downloaded a warning about the site it's quite slow so in this example I'm going to download an iOS V layer 2 image click on the download link agree to the license and the image image will be downloaded now if your account doesn't give you those images you need to purchase a viral license I cannot legally provide you with an image and neither can gns3 you need to purchase your own license and once you've done that you'll be able to log into your account and download The Cisco viral images okay so for Cisco iOS images if you want to use dynamips which is an older way of doing it you can use Cisco iOS images once again it is better to use viral but perhaps you want a lightweight implementation of gns3 and you want to use a Cisco iOS image now this document Cisco iOS images for dynamips gives a lot of good information including important points to remember only 7200 series routers support newer iOS images other platforms are end of life and support Port iOS 12.4 so if you want iOS version 15 you should use iosv a viral image or a 7200 series router the recommended images are 3640 3660 3725 3745 and 7200 series images and they listed here in the document so try and get one of these images others are shown here including 1700s and 2600s but as an example you could use a 3640 image or a 3660 image in my example here I'm going to tell net to a router this is a real physical router and it's running a version of Cisco iOS so show flash shows me the version of iOS so this is a real image from a real router that I could use in gns3 but the best place to go for software is Cisco's website and download software from software. cisco.com I'll put the link below the video so in this example I've selected the downloads Home Products iOS Nexus OS software iOS 12.4 Mainline routers service provider Edge routers and 7200 and when I select 7206 as an example I can select Cisco iOS images and I'll be able to download them from the Cisco website again you need the rights to download the software as an example you need a service contract to download software from Cisco's website so again on Cisco's website I went to downloads Home Products iOS and Nexus OS software selected iOS I chose 12.4 Mainline routers service provider Edge routers 7200 and selected the 7206 selected iOS and that allows me to download router images assuming again that I have a service level agreement so for the 7200 series routers only the 7206 is supported and you could use iOS 15 Mainline or 12.4 Mainline or 12.4 technology train recommended images again are 3640 3660 3725 3745 and 7200 but the best way to go is to purchase a viral license and use viral images but if you don't want to purchase a viral license and you've got a service contract with Cisco you could download an image directly from Cisco's website if you don't have a service level agreement however as in this example you won't be able to download the image so you need to contact Cisco and purchase an image I hope you found the video useful if you enjoyed it please like it but please don't dislike the video because I'm telling you that you have to purchase software from Cisco that is the legal requirement other vendors will allow you to download their software without paying for it so as an example you could run a Rista in genus 3 with no licensing no payment and the same is true for cumulus and others it's a Cisco requirement however that you purchase your I image or purchase a viral [Music] license