CCIE R&S Lab Equipment

22.06.2016 CCIE R&S Lab Equipment | NetworkLessons.
com
CCIE R&S Lab Equipment | NetworkLessons.com
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When you are studying for CCIE R&S (or any other track) you will have to spend a lot of time
(anything between 600 – 1000 hours) configuring your routers and switches. I get a lot of questions
about CCIE lab equipment, things like:
What routers or switches should I buy?
How many routers or switches do I need?
Can I use GNS3 for labs?
etc.
To answer all these kind of questions I decided to write this tutorial. I will give the answers to all these
questions and more. This tutorial is 100% uptodate for the latest version (V5) of the CCIE R&S lab.
Topology
When you study for CCIE you really should use the workbooks from one of the vendors like INE or
Narbik. You can use the CCIE R&S blueprint and study some of the topics on your own but these guys
already did all the work for you by creating labs. Personally I used the workbooks from INE when I
was studying for CCIE R&S.
Each of these vendors uses a “lab topology” for all of their labs. Most of the topologies have 4
switches and 9 routers. 3 of the routers are “backbone” routers, pretty much the same as what you
can expect on the CCIE R&S lab exam. The backbone routers are preconfigured and “out of your
control”. They are used to inject routing information and some other neat tricks.
The number of routers & switches and also the interfaces, cables, router / switch models and IOS
versions will depend on the topology that you are going to use.
To give you an idea what a lab topology looks like, here’s what INE uses:
https://networklessons.com/cisco/ccieroutingswitching/ccierslabequipment/ 1/10
22.06.2016 CCIE R&S Lab Equipment | NetworkLessons.com
The routers are connected to each other using serial interfaces and there’s also a lot of FastEthernet
links. You should first decide what vendor workbooks you want to use before you start thinking about
lab equipment. Each vendor has a list with the routers, switches, interfaces and IOS versions that they
use.
The physical topology never changes throughout the workbooks, you can make an infinite amount of
logical topologies with a lab like this.
Having said that, let’s look at your choices when it comes to equipment.
Real Equipment
When i’m talking about real equipment I mean physical hardware, the stuff you buy on ebay. This
sounds great right? Having your own lab, access it when and wherever you want.
It might sound great but I wouldn’t recommend it. I built my own lab but only because I wanted to keep
it after I passed the lab. I’m still using it when I create tutorials for this website. Here are some of the
disadvantages:
Building your own lab is expensive, even though you can sell most of the hardware when you are
done studying. It’s hard to tell how much money you can still get for your old hardware 12 months
from now, it’s possible that you won’t get much in return.
When you are on a budget you might be tempted to replace some routers or switches with cheaper
models. The problem is that some features are not supported on the cheaper switches. For
example, instead of the 3560 switch you can get a 3550 but it won’t support all IPv6 features or
private VLANs. It will take time to find out what your lab can’t do.
You need a terminal server for remote console access. The Cisco 2511 is a great terminal server
but it’s not cheap.
9 routers and 4 switches draw quite some power, generate heat and make a lot of noise. This is
not something you want in the living room…
Buying all the routers, switches and interfaces takes quite some time. You also need to make sure
that the routers have enough RAM and Flash to store the IOS image.
Depending on where you live, it might be hard to get equipment. Ebay is great but shipping costs
can be quite high.
Before you buy any hardware, doublecheck if you can use it for version 5 of the CCIE R&S lab. In the
previous version (v4) the real lab had 4x 3560 switches so that’s what all vendors were using. Since
version 5 of the lab exam, Cisco doesn’t use a particular switch model and the entire lab is virtual.
Cisco released a document where they explain which router and switch support all commands:
Cisco ISR 2900 with IOS 15.3T Universal software release
Cisco 3560X with IOS 15.0SE Universal (IP Services) software release
If you had to build an entire lab with these devices then it will be very expensive. The 2811 and 1841
routers are also able to run IOS 15.x so you can probably use those.
I checked the 3560x configuration guide and probably the old 3560 running the latest IOS 12.x
release should cover 99% of those topics.
If money is no issue and you love owning your own lab, go for it. If your goal is just to become CCIE
then I wouldn’t recommend doing this, it’s way too time consuming.
GNS3
GNS3 is a great emulator and quite useful when you are studying for CCIE R&S. This is great to use
when you want to create some of your own labs / topologies when you are studying something on
your own. I would not recommend to use it to build one of the vendor topologies however for the
following reasons:
GNS3 does not support switches, only routers. The closest thing you can get to switching is using a
switch module in a router but it only supports a fraction of the commands that you need for the
CCIE R&S lab. You can get around this by connecting real switches to your GNS3 routers. This is
done with a “breakout switch” or multiple network cards.
Support for IOS 15.x is limited. I believe only the 7200 router is able to run IOS 15 in GNS3, some
of the other routers like the 3725 can’t do it.
You need quite some memory. Each router uses about 256MB so with 9 routers so you’ll need
more than 2GB of RAM to run a large topology.
There are some bugs in GNS3 (it’s an emulator after all). There used to be some problems with
Multicast and NTP. It really sucks when something is not working only to find out that your
configuration is correct but GNS3 is acting quirky.
My advice…GNS3 is great for building some quick topologies and practice some labs of your own,
don’t use it to build a full lab topology. Some little things like multicast don’t work well and connecting
real switches to your virtual routers also introduces some problems. They take time to solve which is
better spent at actual studying.
IOU (IOS on Unix)
Cisco doesn’t use real hardware anymore for the R&S lab or some of their rack rentals. IOU (IOS on
Unix) is what they use now. Basically it’s an emulator (like GNS3) that runs on Unix / Solaris but it
doesn’t use as much resources. There’s also IOL (IOS on Linux) which runs on x86 and Linux.
Someone created a frontend for it which is called “webIOU”.
IOU supports routers and also has some layer 2 images that supports switching commands. Not
everything is supported but for switching it’s better than GNS3.
Right now Cisco hasn’t officially released IOU to the public and it also has some bugs. It’s possible
that this is the future of CCIE home labs.
Cisco VIRL
Cisco’s emulator is called VIRL and supports the emulation of routers and switches (since April 2015).
I haven’t tried it yet but I think VIRL will be a nice replacement for GNS3. Routing & switching support
out of the box and it runs IOS 15.x. This might be an option but you’d have to see for yourself.
Rack Rentals
Rack rentals are simple…you pay and get telnet access to a remote lab that is cabled and configured
for you.
You don’t have to worry about anything….hardware, interfaces, cabling, IOS images, GNS3, etc. It’s
all done for you. Since the vendors I mentioned earlier are so popular, there are many companies that
offer rack rentals for their topologies. This has some important advantages:
Everything is ready…you pay, get access and you can lab right away. You can spend your time at
doing labs instead of building one.
The labs in the workbooks have startup configurations for each device and it takes time to
copy/paste these to 13 devices. Most rack rentals have scripts that automatically copy the right
startup configurations to all devices.
Conclusion
I recommend rack rentals as it is the most efficient way. Since you want to be a CCIE you need to
focus on the #1 thing that will help you get there and that’s doing labs. Don’t waste your time at
building a lab or messing with emulators. Use rack rentals and you can learn right away.
Hopefully this has been helpful to you. If you have any questions or something to share, please leave
a comment.
Rate this Lesson:
15 votes
When you are studying for CCIE R&S (or any other track) you will have to spend a lot of time
(anything between 600 – 1000 hours) configuring your routers and switches. I get a lot of questions
about CCIE lab equipment, things like:
What routers or switches should I buy?
How many routers or switches do I need?
Can I use GNS3 for labs?
etc.
To answer all these kind of questions I decided to write this tutorial. I will give the answers to all these
questions and more. This tutorial is 100% uptodate for the latest version (V5) of the CCIE R&S lab.
Topology
When you study for CCIE you really should use the workbooks from one of the vendors like INE or
Narbik. You can use the CCIE R&S blueprint and study some of the topics on your own but these guys
already did all the work for you by creating labs. Personally I used the workbooks from INE when I
was studying for CCIE R&S.
Each of these vendors uses a “lab topology” for all of their labs. Most of the topologies have 4
switches and 9 routers. 3 of the routers are “backbone” routers, pretty much the same as what you
can expect on the CCIE R&S lab exam. The backbone routers are preconfigured and “out of your
control”. They are used to inject routing information and some other neat tricks.
The number of routers & switches and also the interfaces, cables, router / switch models and IOS
versions will depend on the topology that you are going to use.
To give you an idea what a lab topology looks like, here’s what INE uses:
The routers are connected to each other using serial interfaces and there’s also a lot of FastEthernet
links. You should first decide what vendor workbooks you want to use before you start thinking about
lab equipment. Each vendor has a list with the routers, switches, interfaces and IOS versions that they
use.
The physical topology never changes throughout the workbooks, you can make an infinite amount of
logical topologies with a lab like this.
Having said that, let’s look at your choices when it comes to equipment.
Real Equipment
When i’m talking about real equipment I mean physical hardware, the stuff you buy on ebay. This
sounds great right? Having your own lab, access it when and wherever you want.
It might sound great but I wouldn’t recommend it. I built my own lab but only because I wanted to keep
it after I passed the lab. I’m still using it when I create tutorials for this website. Here are some of the
disadvantages:
Building your own lab is expensive, even though you can sell most of the hardware when you are
done studying. It’s hard to tell how much money you can still get for your old hardware 12 months
from now, it’s possible that you won’t get much in return.
When you are on a budget you might be tempted to replace some routers or switches with cheaper
models. The problem is that some features are not supported on the cheaper switches. For
example, instead of the 3560 switch you can get a 3550 but it won’t support all IPv6 features or
private VLANs. It will take time to find out what your lab can’t do.
You need a terminal server for remote console access. The Cisco 2511 is a great terminal server
but it’s not cheap.
9 routers and 4 switches draw quite some power, generate heat and make a lot of noise. This is
not something you want in the living room…
Buying all the routers, switches and interfaces takes quite some time. You also need to make sure
that the routers have enough RAM and Flash to store the IOS image.
Depending on where you live, it might be hard to get equipment. Ebay is great but shipping costs
can be quite high.
Before you buy any hardware, doublecheck if you can use it for version 5 of the CCIE R&S lab. In the
previous version (v4) the real lab had 4x 3560 switches so that’s what all vendors were using. Since
version 5 of the lab exam, Cisco doesn’t use a particular switch model and the entire lab is virtual.
Cisco released a document where they explain which router and switch support all commands:
Cisco ISR 2900 with IOS 15.3T Universal software release
Cisco 3560X with IOS 15.0SE Universal (IP Services) software release
If you had to build an entire lab with these devices then it will be very expensive. The 2811 and 1841
routers are also able to run IOS 15.x so you can probably use those.
I checked the 3560x configuration guide and probably the old 3560 running the latest IOS 12.x
release should cover 99% of those topics.
If money is no issue and you love owning your own lab, go for it. If your goal is just to become CCIE
then I wouldn’t recommend doing this, it’s way too time consuming.
GNS3
GNS3 is a great emulator and quite useful when you are studying for CCIE R&S. This is great to use
when you want to create some of your own labs / topologies when you are studying something on
your own. I would not recommend to use it to build one of the vendor topologies however for the
following reasons:
GNS3 does not support switches, only routers. The closest thing you can get to switching is using a
switch module in a router but it only supports a fraction of the commands that you need for the
CCIE R&S lab. You can get around this by connecting real switches to your GNS3 routers. This is
done with a “breakout switch” or multiple network cards.
Support for IOS 15.x is limited. I believe only the 7200 router is able to run IOS 15 in GNS3, some
of the other routers like the 3725 can’t do it.
You need quite some memory. Each router uses about 256MB so with 9 routers so you’ll need
more than 2GB of RAM to run a large topology.
There are some bugs in GNS3 (it’s an emulator after all). There used to be some problems with
Multicast and NTP. It really sucks when something is not working only to find out that your
configuration is correct but GNS3 is acting quirky.
My advice…GNS3 is great for building some quick topologies and practice some labs of your own,
don’t use it to build a full lab topology. Some little things like multicast don’t work well and connecting
real switches to your virtual routers also introduces some problems. They take time to solve which is
better spent at actual studying.
IOU (IOS on Unix)
Cisco doesn’t use real hardware anymore for the R&S lab or some of their rack rentals. IOU (IOS on
Unix) is what they use now. Basically it’s an emulator (like GNS3) that runs on Unix / Solaris but it
doesn’t use as much resources. There’s also IOL (IOS on Linux) which runs on x86 and Linux.
Someone created a frontend for it which is called “webIOU”.
IOU supports routers and also has some layer 2 images that supports switching commands. Not
everything is supported but for switching it’s better than GNS3.
Right now Cisco hasn’t officially released IOU to the public and it also has some bugs. It’s possible
that this is the future of CCIE home labs.
Cisco VIRL
Cisco’s emulator is called VIRL and supports the emulation of routers and switches (since April 2015).
I haven’t tried it yet but I think VIRL will be a nice replacement for GNS3. Routing & switching support
out of the box and it runs IOS 15.x. This might be an option but you’d have to see for yourself.
Rack Rentals
Rack rentals are simple…you pay and get telnet access to a remote lab that is cabled and configured
for you.
You don’t have to worry about anything….hardware, interfaces, cabling, IOS images, GNS3, etc. It’s
all done for you. Since the vendors I mentioned earlier are so popular, there are many companies that
offer rack rentals for their topologies. This has some important advantages:
Everything is ready…you pay, get access and you can lab right away. You can spend your time at
doing labs instead of building one.
The labs in the workbooks have startup configurations for each device and it takes time to
copy/paste these to 13 devices. Most rack rentals have scripts that automatically copy the right
startup configurations to all devices.
Conclusion
I recommend rack rentals as it is the most efficient way. Since you want to be a CCIE you need to
focus on the #1 thing that will help you get there and that’s doing labs. Don’t waste your time at
building a lab or messing with emulators. Use rack rentals and you can learn right away.
Hopefully this has been helpful to you. If you have any questions or something to share, please leave
a comment.
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