Install Arista EOS in a VM

Arista EOS in a VM
Recently I have attended Arista Cloud Event; I have a chance to talk to Arista technical team to get more information regarding CloudVision, and VXLAN setup.

Then I decided to write this post about the Arista Network and new features such as Cloud Vision, VXLAN and much more,

I will start first to show you how to build your lab environment in order to apply your knowledge to get hands on experiences.
In my first post, I explain the advantage of modern Spine-Leaf over traditional three tire network Architectures in a virtualized environments the impact of east – west, north-south traffic on network performance.

Overview
Arista Networks was founded to deliver software defined cloud networking solutions for large data center and high-performance computing environments.
Consolidation of what was traditionally three-tier Core/Aggregation/Access designs into two-tier Spine/Leaf designs; fewer tiers decrease cost, complexity, cabling and power/heat.
Arista supports scale-out designs built at layer 2 or layer 3 or hybrid L2/L3 designs with open multi-vendor supported protocols like VXLAN that combine the flexibility of L2 with the scale-out characteristics of L3
All Arista switches use the same Arista EOS. There is no difference in platform, software trains or OS.
It’s the same binary image across all switches.

Let’s start setting-up steps of the EOS in a VM on VMware Workstation.
As I mentioned above Arista EOS is released as a single binary image that supports all switches platforms. That same image can be run in a virtual machine!
This article describes how to set up a virtual machine in order to test EOS functionality.

1-Download a copy of the vEOS: Register on the Arista website and then select the boot image and the .vmdk file to download (two files).
Note: you have to use your company email address to register successfully; not allowed to register with free emails (Gmail, Hotmail, and yahoo).
https://www.arista.com/en/Login

After successful register, click –support –Software Download
Then download the following two file:
I have downloaded the following: Aboot-veos-2.1.0.iso and vEOS-lab-4.14.14M.vmdk

2-Install a New Virtual Machine

Chose the “Custom” option and press next to continue

I will keep the default for the Hardware compatibility version and press next.

Since vEOS is based on Fedora, On the Guest Operation System chose Linux as the Guest operating system and Fedora 64-bit as a version.

Give a name to virtual machine and select the location

Allocate at least 1024 MB Memory for Virtual Machine

Chose Network connection, then we will add additional network for the switch.

For the I/O Controller Type, Keep the default (LSI Logic) and Click next

Make sure to select IDE for the “Disk Type” from the radio button and not the SCSI disk (default).

Select “Use an existing virtual disk” and press next.

Browse and select previously downloaded “.vmdk” file, and then click next to continue

Follow the screen instruction to complete the installation,
Remove any unnecessary hardware and add additional Network Adapter (I have added 4 vNic to the VM)

Change the boot order; it is important that both the CD-ROM and Hard disk are on the same IDE bus. They both should be either IDE 0:n or IDE 1:n.
 
Start the vEOS (VM) after setup completed, during the boot process the console will display


Once the switch has successfully booted; you will receive the following login prompt.
When the boot complete you can see the login screen:
Login with username “admin” and no password

vEOS configuration using CLI will be easy for you, if you are familiar with Cisco CLI

type “enable” to enter enable mode. And start configuring the switch.

Notice that we have 3 interface and one management interface assignd by defalt

I hope you have enjoyed this post,

visit Arista web site for initial switch setup

https://www.arista.com/en/um-eos/eos-section-2-1-initial-switch-access#ww1128630

  

In the next post I will start configuring the switch and will covering Layer 2 /MLAG, Layer 3/ECMP and VXLAN
In separate post I will wold you through Arista EOS architecture , SysDB and NetDb then I will cover CloudVision