topic RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU in ExtremeSwitching (EXOS/Switch Engine)

24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Ash — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 13:43:00 GMT

Hi,

I was able to successfully create a QEMU EXOS VM and console into it. Strangely though, when I create the QEMU VM, i choose 24 ports in e1000 type adapter however when i issue the 'show ports' command in EXOS, it only shows 12 ports. Is this limitation built into EXOS or QEMU?

Anyone has any experience in this setup? Is there a way to overcome this limitation?

Thanks

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Drew_C — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 00:37:00 GMT

If I remember correctly, this is an EXOS VM limitation. I'm not aware of a way around this.

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Ash — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 02:04:00 GMT

Drew thanks for the response. If its a EXOS limitation, then its a pity. So i'm guessing there's no way to simulate 24,48 port switches?

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Drew_C — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 02:04:00 GMT

None that I know of.

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Ash — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 02:04:00 GMT

Understood. I think you and Daniel Flouret both work for Extreme. If so, please feed this as a feature request into the next release of the VM, if its a maintained product. I think it'll be incredibly useful to have support for 48 ports on the EXOS VM to simulate some larger topologies in tools like GNS3.

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Stephane_Grosj1 — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 02:04:00 GMT

Hi,

this is not a product per se, more a free tool to play with, but we can have a look why there's such limitation. Not sure if we can remove it easily, so we can't promise anything.

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Ash — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 02:04:00 GMT

Hi Grosjean, Yes its understood its not a sold product. I think it will benefit the community though by allowing the capability to simulate and troubleshoot large (actual) deployed networks.

Looking forward to the info you find out.

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Stephane_Grosj1 — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 02:34:00 GMT

After asking around, it looks like this limit may more be of an Hypervisor limit than vEXOS. Looks like some were able to have 32 ports on VM (qemu). It may vary with the version.

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Ash — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 02:34:00 GMT

Grosjean, Stephane,

Here's the config for my qemu. Please check if possible to see if I've mis configured something.

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Ash — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 02:42:00 GMT

even on my qemu VM, i'm able to configure 32 ports, but when i start up the EXOS VM, it only recognizes 12. I'm determining that its recognizing only 12 because show port command only shows 12.

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Marcin_Kuczera — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 03:05:00 GMT

by the way, what's is the most recent EXOS release in VM environment ?
I need something paralel to 15.7 or higher

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Drew_C — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 03:05:00 GMT

Check our GitHub page - https://github.com/extremenetworks/Virtual_EXOS
EXOS 16.1.2.14 is posted there. v16.1.3 should be arriving soon and I'll post it there too.

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Ash — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 03:08:00 GMT

I'm running 16.1 not sure what the latest is.

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Deadpool — Sat, 13 Feb 2016 22:12:00 GMT

Late to the party here, but I can confirm that 12 ports seems to be the limit in EXOS in Qemu (2.5.0). I also tested out Arista's vEOS in Qemu, and while 24 ports makes it go berserk, it can handle 17 ports (1 management, 16 switchports ) flawlessly.

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

jeronimo — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 17:44:00 GMT

Has there been any headway concerning this in the meantime?

I was able to configure 49 network adapters albeit still only 12 show up (excluding mgmt).

Being able to use more ports (actually as many as an actual physical switch would have, meaning 48 most of the time) would make a lot of sense because you would be able to create your actual topology first in GNS and then just copy/paste the entire thing to your switches without any error-prone port mappings in-between....
Thanks 🙂

Note: It seems to go up to 32+Mgmt (you have to actually stop/start the VM after increasing the adapter count). That's a start, but it could be better 

RE: 24 port EXOS VM in GNS3/QEMU

Bruce_Garlock — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 01:18:00 GMT

My "Holy Grail" would be to have our entire environment in GNS3 and be able to test out changes before making in Prod. Having the 48 ports on a switch would be so helpful in heading towards that goal.

It's good to know that we can at least mimic a 24-port switch by upping the adaptor's - thank you, @jeronimo