GNS3 Nexus (NX-OSv) switch setup and configuration Part 1: GNS3 switching options Part 12

In this video, I'm going to show you how to import and configure a Nexus switch in GNS3. [Music] The first place you should go is the documentation page and do a search for NX or Nexus OS. First hit is Cisco NXOSV appliance. So we told that the Nexus OSV appliance is a reference platform for an implementation of the Cisco Nexus operating system which is based on the Nexus 7000 series platforms. This runs as a full virtual machine on a hypervisor. It also supports the Nexus API and MLS a label distribution protocol. You can get more information on viral.sisco.com. So if we click on features and click on the various Cisco devices, we told that Nexus OSV supports various protocols. We also told that the Titanium version has now reached the end of its development cycle. I'm going to show you how to install and configure this appliance in a moment, but you can also read the documentation. Default username and password is adminadmin. A default configuration is also present. You need this amount of RAM and KVM needs to be enabled on your virtual machine or in the GNS3 VM. So in other words, we need to use VMware Workstation or for example VMware ESXi. Now the images that are supported are these two 7.3 and 7.2. You can click on this download link which will take you to the Cisco viral website. You'll need to log in and once logged in you can click on download viral and then select the image to download. So in this example I've gone to Nexus OSV Titanium Final 730. Click on download and that will download the software. The viral website is very slow. So you have to wait a while for software to download. When the license agreement displays, click accept license agreement and then just wait for the software to download from the website. Again, it takes a while, but what you should notice is that the software starts downloading once you've agreed to the license agreement. So, there you go. You can see that the software is now downloading to my local computer. I've moved that image to my downloads folder on my Mac so that it's ready to be used when we configure GNS3. So, back in the documentation, this shows you where to download the software. Don't forget that you need to enable the license grace period command to enable some of the features on the Nexus image such as OPF. I'll demonstrate that in a moment. The next step is to go to the marketplace. Click appliances and then you can do a search for Nexus. So Cisco NXOSV. Click download template. Template is downloaded to your local computer. In my example, my Mac has changed the extension. So I'll change it back to GNS3 appliance. So I've got the appliance downloaded and I've also got the operating system downloaded. So now in GNS3 and there are multiple ways to do this but I've clicked on routers as an example and I can click on new appliance template and click import an appliance template. So I can import it that way or I could go to file import appliance. I'll select the Nexus appliance and click open. So we told a bit of information about the appliance. It's going to be added to the multi-layer switch category. It's a Nexus operating system from Cisco. The appliance is maintained by the GNS3 team and KVM is required. So don't use Virtual Box. Use a VMware for this appliance. It's recommended that we use the Genus3 VM. So in my example, I'm using VMware Fusion and I've got the GNS3 VM running. I'm using GNS3 2.0 for this demonstration. I'm going to click next. We're told that the server requirements are okay. So click next. Now it's found the image that I downloaded. The easiest way to do this is to move the operating system or image for your appliance to the downloads directory and also store the appliance template in that directory. If it's not found, you can click download which will take you to the viral website so that you can download the operating system. Otherwise, you can click import and navigate to where you've got the operating system stored and click open. So once again, I've got the titanium image. So I'm going to click next. We asked whether we want to install this image. I'm going to say yes. We asked to select the QMU settings. I'm going to stay with the defaults and click next. We're told that the appliance has 16 adapters. It uses E1000 adapters. The console type is Tnet and KVM is once again required. So I'm going to click next. We're told that the username and password are admin. A default configuration is present. That's good. So I'm going to click finish. We're told that the Nexus appliance is installed. So I can click okay. Go to switches. And I now have the appliance which I can use in the Genus3 workspace. What I'll do here is drag two IOS V routers to the workspace and connect them to the Nexus switch. I'm going to connect the first one to Ethernet 21 and the second one to Ethernet 22. Notice there is a problem at the moment with the descriptions of the interfaces. So the interfaces are shown as E10 and 20. But when you hover your mouse over the link, it says Ethernet 21 and 22 as the interfaces used on the Nexus. That is however not always correct. So what I'm going to do is use CDP to check how the devices are connected. I'll open up a console. iOS V is booting. Here is the Nexus booting. So, we can see that it's booting the Titanium image. And all you need to do now is wait for the device to boot up. One thing to note about viral images is that they take a while to boot up. So, both the iOS V images as well as the Nexus images take a while to boot up. Hope you enjoyed the video. If it was a benefit to you, please like it and please subscribe to my YouTube channel. I wish you all the very best. [Music]