Cisco vIOS

This is the vrnetlab docker image for Cisco vIOS router.

Justification

Cisco vIOS is a virtual router that can be used for testing and development purposes. It is older than IOS XE and IOS XR (running only 15.x IOS version), however, it has several advantages:

• Small memory footprint (512MB vs 4GB+ for IOS XE/XR). With KSM enabled, the memory usage can be even lower.
• Easy to run on a laptop or a small server with limited resources for education purposes.
• Good for scalability testing of applications, when you don't need all new features of IOS XE/XR.

Building the docker image

Qemu disk image can be obtained from Cisco Modeling Labs (CML). More information about Cisco vIOS: https://developer.cisco.com/docs/modeling-labs/iosv/#iosv

Once you extract disk image, format the name to the following format: cisco_vios-[VERSION].qcow2 Where [VERSION] is the desired version of the image, for example 15.6.3M1.

Finally, you can build the docker image with the make docker-image command.

Tested with versions:

• 15.9.3M6

System requirements

• CPU: 1 core
• RAM: 512MB
• Disk: <1GB

Network interfaces

The router supports up to 16 GigabitEthernet interfaces.

• The first interface GigaEthernet0/0 is used as the management interface (it is placed in separated VRF).
• The rest of the interfaces are numbered from GigaEthernet0/1 and are used as data interfaces. They are mapped to the docker container interfaces eth1, eth2, etc.

Management plane

The following protocols are enabled on the management interface:

• CLI SSH on port 22
• NETCONF via SSH on port 22 (the same credentials are used as for CLI SSH)
• SNMPv2c on port 161 (public used as community string)

Environment variables

ID	Description	Default
USERNAME	SSH username	admin
PASSWORD	SSH password	admin
HOSTNAME	device hostname	vios
TRACE	enable trace logging	false
CONNECTION_MODE	interface connection mode	tc

Configuration persistence

The startup configuration can be provided by mounting a file to /config/startup-config.cfg. The changes done in the router configuration during runtime are not automatically persisted outside the container - after stopping the container, the content of the flash/NVRAM is lost. User is responsible for persistence of the changes, for example, by copying the configuration to mounted startup-configuration file.

Sample containerlab topology

name: vios-lab

topology:
  kinds:
    linux:
      image: vrnetlab/cisco_vios:15.9.3M6
  nodes:
    vios1:
      kind: linux
      binds:
        - vios1.cfg:/config/startup-config.cfg
      env:
        HOSTNAME: xrv1
    vios2:
      kind: linux
      binds:
        - vios2.cfg:/config/startup-config.cfg
      env:
        HOSTNAME: xrv2
  links:
    - endpoints: ["vios1:eth1","vios2:eth1"]