Cisco finally released long-awaited personal network simulator VIRL. VIRL is a simulator like Cisco CML – Cisco Modelling Lab released few moths ago which is made available for business network simulations and testing in engineering normal day job. With VIRL we got a personal version of CML with drastically lower price tag aimed to help students preparing for Cisco CCNP and more than that for those preparing CCIE lab exam. VIRL will surely help the engineers managing small business network to proof their configuration change before applying it to real network.
This solution give us a more stable and “official” GNS3 which will save all the time spent troubleshooting lab issues that were really GNS3 issues.
It will save a lot of time and money for all students learning cisco technologies. Until now they needed to rent racks or purchase real Cisco gear in order to get their study environment. It will help network engineers at work to. It will give them a mean to prove their new and better design ideas before suggesting it to management.
It will eventually lead to better engineers, better network designs and less network faults which were caused before VIRL by testing the new network config directly on production network.
VIRL is available at virl.cisco.com and is able to simulate IOSv, IOS XRv, NX-OSv, CSR1000v + third-party Ubuntu Linux and possible more.. Price tag goes from 79.99$ for Academic version to 199.99 for Standard Personal edition. Of course this is a one year licence.
Happy labing to everyone,
Finally.
Br,
Hans