Create a Lab Environment for Network Automation

0:10Hey guys, and welcome to the very first skill in the Advanced Network Automation with Cisco and Python course. I must say, I'm really quite excited about what we're going to learn together. And I really do hope you enjoy the ride. So let's discuss what we're going to be doing within this skill, and that is building our very own network automation environment. Now, what exactly is a network automation environment? OK, so let's talk about it. Now, what I will say is that if you're already confident about how to build a network automation environment, then feel free to skip this introductory skill and go straight to learning about the tools we're going to be using within this course.

0:47But even if you do know how to build a network automation environment, I'm still going to recommend that you stick around and watch this skill, because I really do believe it's going to be helpful for you. So let's talk about what we're going to be covering within this skill. Now, the very first thing which we're going to have to do is install VMware. This is going to host our virtual machines where we're going to be installing our automation system as well as the software to be able to simulate our network topologies. So we'll walk through the downloading and installation of VMware as well as how to configure the correct network in between virtual machines.

1:21Next, we're going to talk about how you can install a software called EVE-NG. Now, if you're unaware of what EVE-NG is, it is software, which is going to allow us to build our network topologies. So that is going to be very crucial for us. Next, we'll discuss how we can download and install into our EVE-NG machine our Cisco images. Now, the caveat with installing Cisco images is that you do actually have to pay for a license to be able to get these images. And we'll go through what type of license that is when we get to that Nugget.

1:53However, I'm fully aware that not everyone can afford to just go and splash money on buying a Cisco license. So I also want to provide an alternative and that is downloading the free Arista images. Now, if you're unsure what Arista is, Arista is basically another vendor, much like Cisco, just like you have Juniper or Nokia. But the good thing about the Arista images is that they're free to download, and the command line is almost identical to the Cisco command line. So all your show IP interface briefs, all your show runs, all your configure terminal commands, they're all going to be the exact same using these Arista images as you would get on the Cisco images, the difference being is that you don't have to pay for the Arista images.

2:35So we'll walk through how we can download and install the Arista images into EVE-NG also. What we're also going to cover is the installation of an Ubuntu virtual machine. Now, this virtual machine is going to act like our development environment. This is where we're going to install all of our automation tools such as Python and Python-based automation frameworks such as the Nornir framework, which we'll definitely see a lot of in this course. Now, to be able to write our code within an Ubuntu VM, what I'm going to go through is the installation of something called VS code, Virtual Studio code.

3:11This is a really exceptional cross-platform IDE, which is an integrated development environment, and it is perfect for writing codes and managing configuration text files. Now, I'm going to go through two different ways we can install VS code, that is, locally on our Windows machine, and be able to do something called Remote SSH into our Ubuntu server, or if you prefer, I'm also going to walk through how you can install VS code directly within this Ubuntu VM. Now, what we'll also cover is the very important concept of OOB.

3:45This is out-of-band management. This is going to provide us an easy way to automate our network without relying on the connectivity of our production network. This is a very, very important topic. Now, if you don't want to have to rely on things like EVE-NG and installing images, what I also want to introduce to you is how you can use the Cisco DevNet Sandboxes. Now, these Cisco DevNet Sandboxes are really, really great. And whilst they do have some limitations, which we'll talk about, they really are a great resource as a way to test your automation solutions.

4:19And the best part yet is that they're super, super easy to access. So these are some of the topics that we're going to be covering within this skill, and I really do think it's going to be valuable for you to follow along with the process as demonstrated before we dive into the fun stuff of how to actually automate these networks. OK, so enough of the talking. Let's get to action. What we're going to be doing first is installing VMware, and that is coming up in the very next Nugget. So I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:10Hey, guys. And welcome back. So in the previous Nugget, we just laid out the rough plans that we have for the skill. And the very first thing that we decided that we want to do is to be able to install VMware. This is where it all starts. This is a crucial component to be able to getting your automation environment up and running. So let's get to it. So what I want you to do is to open up your browser of choice. I'm going to use Firefox here. And what I'm going to search for is VM Workstation Player. So we hit Enter, and we have this link at the very top here. Download VM Workstation Player, VMware.

0:42Let's go to this case. I'm just going to scroll down a little bit here. OK. So what I will say up front is that I have a Windows machine. I don't have access to any Mac. So unfortunately, I can't walk through the Mac installation for you. As best I understand, if you want to use VMware on a Mac, I think you have to use VMware Fusion. So if you're using a Mac, then be sure to check that out. So what I'm going to click here is try workstation 16.0 player for Windows, and I'm going to click Download Now. So let's do that then. Now, straight away we have this pop-up here.

1:13All I'm going to do is select Save File. So let's click Save File. And if you go to Download, that should be downloaded. So what I'm going to do is go to my Downloads and then click this link here. So what it's going to do is take me to the Setup Wizard. So what I'm going to say here is Next. And I'm going to accept the license agreement and Click Next again. Now, it's going to give you the option of where you want to install to. Now, it's going to automatically try to install in the C drive here. Now, my C drive is running a little bit low on space. So what I'm going to do is change it to my D drive, where I have plenty of space.

1:45If you want to use your C drive, then by all means leave it as is. So I'm going to click Change here. If I click on this part here, go to D drive, now I've created a folder here called New VMware Install. This is where I'm going to choose to install VMware. So I'll click this and say OK. But you can choose whatever you please. So what I'm going to say is add VMware Workstation Console Tools. Enter the system path. Say Next, and what I'm going to do is uncheck these boxes. I'm really not interested in this for now. And I'll Click Next. And I want to have the Desktop and the Start Menu shortcuts created so I'll say Next and just click Install.

2:19And now the installation is going to begin. This shouldn't take too long, maybe a few minutes at most. Perfect. So what it's saying here is that the installation has completed. I'm just going to click Finish. So I know have this icon here on my Desktop. Let me click this, and now I have VM Workstation 16.0 Player installed and ready to go. So now that we have VMware installed, what we now want to do is to install EVE-NG within VMware. Now, how do we do that? Well, that's what we're going to be covering in the very next Nugget. So I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, guys and welcome back. So in the previous Nugget, we had just installed a VM Workstation Player, and we had decided that we want to be able to install EVE-NG so that we can begin building network topologies for automation. So let's get to it. Now, the very first thing which I want to do, again, is to open my browser here. I'm going to choose Firefox. And all I'm going to do is search for EVE-NG.

0:32So If I go to the website here, and at the very top, I click Download. Then what I will say is that with EVE-NG, you do have the option to be able to install a professional edition. Now, this requires a license which you have to pay for. You do get additional features. But they're not absolutely mandatory for what we need to be able to do. So what we are going to be doing is installing the Free EVE Community Edition. So what I want to do is just scroll down a little bit here, just move down. And now we're at the section where we have the Free Community Edition. Now, you do have the option to install the ISO or the OVF.

1:05Now, the easiest way, in my opinion, is to install the OVF. So we're going to be clicking one of these links here. Now, what I'm going to choose is the MEGA mirror. So let's go and click on that just now. That should open up this link here. I'm going to accept the cookies, and all I'm going to do is click Download. And this is about a 1 gigabyte download. So it may take a little bit of time, depending on your internet connection. So what I'm going to say here is click Save File. And if I go up to my Downloads, and I right click this and open Containing folder. So what I want to do here is right click this and click Extract All.

1:38Now, what I'm going to do is click Extract again, and this is going to go through the extraction process. Perfect. So what I can now do is double click this folder. And now we can see here, we have this OVF file here. And this is what we want to be able to install into our VMware. So let's go back to VMware and import this then. OK. So I go back to VMware. I'm going to say Open a Virtual Machine. And all I'm going to do is browse to that same location. So in my case, it was in Firefox Downloads, EVE-NG COMM. And then we have this OVF file here.

2:10So click on this and choose Open. Now, what I need do it is to give my VM a name. So I'll just say EVE-COMMUNITY-VM, and then I'm going to choose the storage path. But I want to store this VM, again, like I said, my C drive is running little bit low. So I'm going to change the location to the D Drive. So I'll click Browse. I'll go into my D Drive, and I created this folder called EVE-NG-INSTALL-LOCATION. So I'll click OK and then choose Import. So we know how this VM called EVE-COMMUNITY-VM. What I want to do is select Edit Virtual Machine Settings.

2:41Now, realistically, how much memory do you want to give this VM? Well, as much memory as your computer can actually afford. If you've got a lot of memory available, then certainly give the VM as much memory as you can. This is only going to help performance when you build large topologies. In my case, I've got a 16 gigabyte laptop. I'm just going to give it 8 gig, and I'll leave the processors at 4 at the moment. Then what I'm going to do is change the network adapter. I'm going to change it to NAT. This is going to share the host IP address. So I'll click OK. And that is ultimately the only real change I'm going to make.

3:14So with those VMs selected, I'm going to choose Play Virtual Machine, click this, and this is going to turn the virtual machine on. Now it's given me this option that there are VMware tools for Linux available. Do I want to install them? I'm going to click Download and Install. And they are going to install for me. Now, the username is going to be root in lowercase, and the password is going to be the word eve in lowercase. So let's take that and then-- so I'll say, root and then I'll say, eve. Hit Enter. So I'll take eve for the root password. And then I'll repeat the same password, eve again.

3:45Now what do I want to call the host name for the system? I'm just going to leave it as EVE-NG. So just push Enter. I'm not going to be using a DNS domain name, so I'm just going to click Enter with example.com. Now, do I want to use DHCP or a static IP address for the network adapter? I'm going to leave it at DHCP and just click Enter. Do I have an NTP configured? I do not. So again, I'm just going to leave this blank and click Enter. Now, how do I want the VN to be able to connect to the internet? I'm just going to leave it at direct connection. So I'm just going to again hit Enter.

4:16And that's all we need to do. Super, super simple. So what I want you to notice here is is that it actually does tell me the IP address, but I have the browse through, and that is this one here. So in my case, that's going to be 192.168.31.128. Now, that almost certainly is going to be a different IP address than what you'll get. Basically, whatever IP address you get, this is what you want to type into your browser. OK, so again, let's open up our browser, and let me type the IP address in. So I'll say http://192.168.31.128.

4:51Hit Enter. And now its going to take me to an EVE login page. Now, the user name here is not going to be root. Instead, it's going to be the word admin. But the password is still going to be eve. So let's type in those credentials then. So I'll say admin, and the password is eve. Now, as far as this part here, we have an option to choose a native console or an HTML5 console. Basically, choosing the native console, that's going to allow you to access your devices over your favorite SSH terminal client such as maybe say PuTTY or SecureCRT.

5:25However, if you choose the HTML5 client, you can actually manage your devices just via a web browser tab. Now, I personally like to use the native one, because I do like to use PuTTY myself. But if you don't have anything installed such as PuTTY or SecureCRT, using the HTML5 client is a really handy way to be able to manage your devices. So from now, let's go for the minimalist approach, and we'll just choose HTML5. And we'll sign in. OK, so we click Save. Now, if we go over to this icon here, Add a New Lab, let's click on this.

5:56And what we can do is give our lab a name, and we'll just call this one test1 and click Save. And this is going to open up a workspace where we can actually begin adding devices. The problem is, is that we only have one device, and that is a VPC. So if I right click and choose Nodes, all of these devices are grayed out, as you can see, because of not being installed. But at the very bottom, we have a virtual PC. And if we right click this, Start, we could turn that device on. And we just click on the device. As you can see, it's opened up a connection within our browser tab.

6:27But like I say, this is super limited for us right now. We want to be able to automate in devices such as Cisco. So this requires that we install those images into our EVE-NG. Now, how exactly are we going to do that? Well, that is what we're going to be talking about in the very next Nugget. So I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, guys, and welcome back. So in the previous Nugget, we had just installed EVE-NG. The big problem, however, is that we didn't have any images installed just yet. And that's not good. However, we're going to solve that problem by installing our very first accessible images into our VM. So with that said, let's get to it. So if we open up our browser again, we go to Firefox.

0:31And what I'm going to search for a Cisco CML-P. That a Cisco Modeling Labs Personal. So if we go in here, click this link, what I'm going to do is go up to the top right hand corner here and choose Login. Now, if you haven't actually created an account with Cisco, you're going to have to create an account and just follow the process there as you it directs you to. In my case, however, I actually do have an account, so I'm going to log in with this. So I'll click Log In, and I'm just going to type in my email address and login. OK, so I've typed in my email and my password, so now I have logged in. OK, so if I scroll down a little bit here-- now, like I said at the beginning of the skill, in order to use the Cisco images, you're going to have to pay for this product.

1:10So if you haven't bought CML-P yet, then what you want to do is go to the personal? Option here, and click Buy Now. Now, the price is $199. I know that is not cheap, but I certainly do believe that, if you can afford it, it certainly is worth your while to purchase. Now, again, don't worry if you can't afford this. In the next Nugget, we're going to go through how to install Arista images for free, which pretty much have almost identical command line as do Cisco. Now, once you purchase this product, you're going to have a link to download CML-P. Now, within CML-P, built in, you're going to have these images.

1:45So let me show you what this looks like once you've purchased your product and have downloaded your CML-P. OK, so I have downloaded CML-P here within this folder. These are all the files which I need. Now, you actually have the CML-P Virtual Machine. This is an alternative to EVE-NG. But I personally prefer to use EVE-NG. All I really want from CML-P is access to the built in images. So how do we get the images from those downloads so that we can extract them and put them into our EVE-NG community edition?

2:15Well, see this option here down at the very bottom? Refplat-- if you re-click this and click Mounts-- and what this is going to do is mount this on your DVD E drive. Now, within here, you're going to see a folder saying virl-base-images. If you click on this here, within this folder, we have all the images which we need. We've got the ASA firewall, we've got a CSR 1000v, IOSv, IOS layer 2 images. We have NXOS, so on and so forth. So to keep things simple, let me just drag these onto my desktop here. And I'll just drag three.

2:46I'll drag the csr1000v because this is the image we're going to be using later on within the course for NETCONF and RESTCONF, and I'll also pull my IOSv. This is my layer three router image. And I'll also take the IOS layer 2 image, which is our switch image. OK, so let me just close this now. So now we have these images dragged onto our desktop. So after we click one of these, here we have the qcow file, which is the file format that we're going to use for our EVE-NG. OK, now there's a few things that we need to install to get this up and running.

3:17The first thing we're going to install is something called PuTTY. This is going to be your SSH client, so let me go and install that first. So if you do a search for PuTTY and click the top link here-- and what I'm going to do is click Download it here. So click this. Now, I've got a 64-bit machine, so I'm going to choose the top one-- 64-bit MSI installer. So if I save the file here and I go to my Downloads-- let me just click this to open the file. It tells me this is an executable file. It may contain viruses, but this is a trusted source, so I'm going to say OK. And let's just go through the installation, which it will say Next.

3:48Where do I want to save it? I'll just keep on the C drive. And then I'll just select Install. OK, perfect. If I just click Finish, the PuTTY Readme pops up. Let me just close this. And then if I go the corner and I type PuTTY, we now have our SSH client. OK, great. So that's the first thing we're going to install. The second thing is going to be something called WinSCP. Let's go and install that then. So if you Google for WinSCP, click the top link, and then just click Download Now and then Download WinSCP. Click this link here. And it's going to pop up with a Setup.exe.

4:21Let's save this file. And if we go to our downloads-- we have it. Let's click this open. Now, what I'm going to say is Install For All Users. I'm going to accept the license agreement, and I'm going to choose a typical installation. This is the recommended installation, so I'm going to click Next. User interface-- I'll say Commander, and I'll go on Next. Finally, we'll choose Install, and everything is going to install. OK, so I'll just uncheck the open Get Started page, and I'll launch WinSCP. Perfect. So next, as a client, we need to be able to transfer our images into our Virtual Machine. OK, so that's working, so let's close this down temporarily.

4:52And what we want to do is to make sure that our EVE-NG is turned on. OK, so as we can see, our EVE-NG VM is on, and we know the IP address for my VM is 192.168.31.128. OK, so what I want to do is set for PuTTY, open that up, and then I'm going to type in the address of my EVE-NG. So that's 192.168.31.128. I'm going to be connected over port 22 because it's SSH, and I'm going to choose the connection type as SSH. Now, if I click Open-- now, previously, because I had an old machine which I removed so that I could demonstrate this installation, I've got an actual conflict of keys effectively saying that, this IP address SSH key is actually changed.

5:35That's fine. All I'm going to say is Accept because this is what I expect. OK, so what am I going to log in as? We know the name is root and the password is eve-- E-V-E. Hit Enter, and now we've logged into the machine. And what I also want to do is do the same thing on our WinSCP. So let's click WinSCP. The host name is going to be 192.168.31.128. It will be port 22. The user name is root, and the password is eve. If I click Login, do I want to Accept the key?

6:07I'm going to say Yes. And now it's going to log in, and now we can see we've actually logged in on the right hand side. This is the EVE-NG machine. On the left-hand side, we have my actual machine. OK, perfect. So what I want to do now is to open up a web browser, and what I'm going to search for is EVE-NG virl and then click this top link here, Cisco vIOS from VIRL, and I'm going to follow this process. The first I'm going to do is install the layer three image. So what I'm going to do is just copy this command here-- mkdir to make it the directory for our layer three image. Copy this.

6:38And if I go to my PuTTY and paste this in, hit enter, now I've created this directory. So now this directory exists-- vios-adventerprise. What I want to do is to transfer my layer three image into this directory. So what I can do is do that on WinSCP. So remember, I moved my images onto the desktop and my layer three images-- this one here, IOS. OK, so on the right hand side, I want to move to this new directory. So the path is opt, unetlab, addons, qemu, and then the name of the folder here, vios-adventerprise.

7:12So let's follow that path. We'll go to opt, unetlab, addons, qemu, and there's this folder we just created. Let's click on this. And what I want to do is just copy these two here and drag them into this folder. And I'll just say OK. And then it's going to move these files over. So now if I go back to my directory-- and let me cd into this directory here. Enter, enter. If I do an ls-- and now we can see those two files have been copied from my desktop, and I'm now within the VM. So let's go back to our browser. And what I need to do here for my Cisco vIOS images is change these file names to be virtioa qcow2.

7:47So now I'm in this directory, what I want to say is mv to move this file and change the name to virtioa.qcow2. So hit Enter. Now, if I do an LS, that file name has been changed to this. And this is crucial. And now what I want to do is fix the permissions. So if I copy this command here-- copy you-- and just paste that command and hit Enter. Perfect. So now if we go back to EVE-NG and I log in with admin eve, I can now use a native console because I have PuTTY installed. Just sign in.

8:17Now, if I right click and choose Nodes, if I scroll down, I'm going to see a blue Cisco vIOS Router. That is not grayed out anymore. It's now accessible. And if I just click Save, that device is going to be present. So let's do the same for the layer switch as well as the ciosrv router. OK, so let's go back. If we scroll on down-- and what I want to do here at part two is to copy this folder. I'll say mkdir, and this is for viosl2 this time. OK, so let me just cd back to my main directory.

8:48And what I am going to do is paste this in to create this other directory. So now if I go back to WinSCP and I click here to go back out a directory, now you can see we've only still got that one folder showing up. That's because our page hasn't refreshed. So if I click this green icon here to refresh the page, do that, there's that second folder we just created, and this is for our L2 images. Let's click in here. And what I want to do is go back out a directory, and I'll go into the L2 images. And let me drag these two over-- copy you. Now, again, we have to change the name from vIOS, so let's go into that now.

9:21Go back to PuTTY, and I'll just cd into this directory-- cd, and I'll copy you. OK, so we've done LS. What I want to do is change the name of this file here. So I'll say mv and take in the name of the file, tab that out, and then I'll say virtioa.qcow2. Hit Enter-- if I do an LS, that has now been changed. So now what. I want to do here is to fix the permission. So if I just up arrow to get to that same command-- there it is. They're opt, unetlab, wrappers, unl wrapper, -a fixpermissions. Hit Enter.

9:51And now our layer two image should now be accessible. Let's go back to EVE-NG, right click, go to Nodes. Now we can see the vIOS switch is also in blue. That's accessible. So let's save this. And lastly, let's do the CSRv Router. So, if you see, that's for EVE-NG CSR. It's going to take you to the EVE-NG website. So let's copy this. Now what I'm going to do is scroll down to state 8, and I'm just going to copy this part here. Copy you. OK, let's cd back-- pwd. I'll just clear the screen. And what I'll do is I'll paste this in to create a new directory.

10:22Perfect. So again, let's go back to our WinSCP. R we arrow up to go out the directory and we refresh the page, we now have our third folder. Let's go back to our desktop here, and we'll go into the CSR1. And we'll go into the CSR here, and all we do is copy these and pull them over as well. So now we're transferring the CSR from our desktop into our Virtual Machine once again. So let's cd into this directory here-- copy this, hit Enter. We'll do an ls. And what I want to do is mv csr1000 universal, and we'll just tab this.

10:55And again, we'll do virtioa.qcow2. Perfect. Clear you. And if we just fix permissions, just arrow up. OK, opt, unetlab, wrappers, unl wrapper, -a fixpermissions, hit Enter and bam! That should be our three devices within our EVE-NG, and they all should be able to boot up correctly. So let's go back and test these out. So I'll just right click and turn off VPC. In fact, I'll just delete this-- get this out of the road. So what I'll do is go over to the left hand side, click More Actions, and click Start All Nodes to start the switch and the regular router.

11:26Now, these should take a few minutes to actually boot up. Just give it a little bit of time. OK, so I've waited a few minutes to let them boot up. What I'm going to do it just click on one of these devices. I'll click this one. Now, if it's not naturally finding PuTTY, then you're going to have to go in and manually choose it. In my case, it's finding it OK. So what I'm going to say is just Open Link. And if I just hit Return, we now have our switch here. Enable, Show, Run. Simple as that. So that's our switch up. If we go here and click on the router-- and what I'm going to do is just check this box so it always opens it with PuTTY.

11:57Choose application, PuTTY, Open Link, Hit Return-- I'll just say no. And there we have a router image again. We'll just do Show Version. All our commands are available to us. So just close this down, and I'll shut these off. And the last one I'm going to check is going to be the CSR image. Now, this image is a little bit more heavy weight. It takes more resources. And this is the image we're going to using later on in the course when we're dealing with NETCONF and RESTCONF. Let's go on to Nodes, and we'll choose Cisco CSR. And I'll just do Save. Now, if I right click, go on to Start, and give this a few minutes again to boot up-- OK, so a few minutes have passed.

12:32Let me click on CSR, hit Enter, just say no. Hit Enter again, hit Enter one more time, and perfect! It looks like this image is also working. So there we have it. We now have our Cisco images up and running within our EVE-NG. This is going to allow us to build Cisco topologies-- topologies which we can then later automate. But like I said, these images do have to be purchased. So perhaps you can't afford to spend $199 on this Cisco license. So what I want to do now is to present a second option to you-- an alternative.

13:03And that is what we're going to be doing in the very next Nugget. So I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[AUDIO LOGO] Hey, guys, and welcome back. So in the previous Nugget, we had just installed our Cisco images into an EVE-NG. In this Nugget, what we're going to do is to download the free Arista images and install them also. This is a really great alternative if you can't afford to buy those Cisco images. OK, so let's get to it. The first time we are going to do again is to open up our web browser.

0:30Now, if you just search for Arista login-- let's go and click this top link here. Now, these images are absolutely free. They're not going to cost you anything. But you do have to create an account. If you don't have an account, then you're going to have to first specify that you need a User Account. Click this link here, and then follow all this information. Once you've done this, you will eventually receive an email with information about how to log in, which is what I've done. So what I'm going to do is go back, and I'm going to log in with my login information. OK. So now, I've logged in. It says Welcome John at the top.

1:02So what going do now is scroll down to the very bottom of this page here. And what I want to do is select Software Downloads at the very bottom here. So click this link. OK, so let's scroll down a little bit here. Now what I want to do is expand this one here, vEOS-lab. Just push the plus sign here. OK. So what I want to do is expand this Bit. And I'm going to click this one here. Aboot-veos-serial-8.0.0.iso. Lets click this. And what I want to do is save this file. So, OK. And this is going to download. Similarly, what I'm going to do is going to 4.26-- expand that one.

1:36And then I want to download as the VMDK image, which is this here. So I click this one here. Again, we want to save this. And these are going to be downloaded. Case you know they've been downloaded, I've moved the Aboot image as well as the vEOS image onto my desktop for easy access. What I'm going to do is the same type of thing we did with the Cisco images. So the first thing I'll do is if I go back to my web browser, and if you search for EVE-NG Arista-- let's click on this top link here. And what I'm going to do is copy this here and kit out and make that directory for the Arista images.

2:10So copy you. And then I'll open up PuTTY once again. Let me log in to my EVE-NG so 128, it's port 22, SSH and click Open. The log in is root and eve is the password. So let's paste this in to create this directory. Perfect. And now what I'm going to do is to go back to WinSCP and move these images into this folder. So WinSCP-- let's log in with address 192.168.31.128, port 22, username is roots and password is eve. Let's click Login.

2:40So let's go to opt, unetlab, addons, qemu, and then go into veos-- this folder we've just created here. Now, again, for easy access, I moved those images from my Downloads onto my Desktop. So what I want to do is to move these over. So I'll drag the Aboot image into this folder, and I'll say OK. And I'll drag the vEOS into the same folder, and this is going to copy on over. So what I'm going to do here-- I just minimize this. And what I'm going to do is copy this part here-- opt qcow.

3:12So copy here. And let's cd enter this directory. So cd/opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/veos. Now, let's paste this command. And then if I type vEOS and just tab the rest out to get the image. And then I'm going to say hda.qcow2. Hit enter. Case [INAUDIBLE] ls. OK, so now what you want to do is remove this VMDK image. We no longer need that. Now, we've created the qcow from it. So let's remove this ls. And what I want to do is mv the Aboot image, and call it cdrom.iso.

3:47So [INAUDIBLE] ls These images are now called this. And again, we want fix our permissions. So let's copy here. And we'll just paste this in. Hit Enter. And that should be it for Arista images. So if we go back to EVE-NG-- let me right click. Choose Nodes. And now, we have Arista vEOS. If choose Save and if I right click and push start, that should turn on. Give it a few minutes. So once a few minutes have passed, let's click on the Arista Image. Hit Enter. OK, localhost log in. So the log in is just the word admin.

4:18Hit Enter. And now, we've logged in. And you're going to see this is super, super similar to Cisco. So if, for example, I click en, it takes me to Enable Mode. Now, the first thing I want to do is type zerotouch cancel because Arista is going to try to do something called Zero Touch Provision. If I hit this, that's going to reload the switch. And then once it comes back up, it's going to not attempt to do Zero Touch Provision. It's just going to act regularly. OK. So a few minutes have passed. Let's reload and let's type admin. And I just want to quickly highlight just how similar this image is to using Cisco.

4:51If we want to configure something, we will say enable. Then conf t. Then we can say something like router ospf 1. And then say router id 1.1.1.1. We can say network 192.168.1.0 with a welcome mask of 0.0.0.255 area 0. We can go back out and say show run. We can say show IP int brief. We can say show version. So again, if you don't have the ability to pay for the Cisco images, sign up for Arista, download these free images, and you'll be able to effectively follow on the labs no problem at all.

5:25So there you have it. There's your free alternative to be able to build a network and topologies. Topologies, which we can then use to practice our automation. OK, I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[CBT NUGGETS JINGLE] Hey guys, and welcome back. So in the previous Nuggets, we had just installed EVE-NG, we added those Cisco images, and as an alternative, we also added the rest of the images. Now what we want to do is to focus on our development environment where we can install our automation tools. What we're going to be doing is installing an Ubuntu server within our VMware virtual machine. So let's roll up our sleeves and get going.

0:32So again, let's go to our browser, open up Firefox, and if you just search for "Ubuntu download," click the top link here. We'll accept all and visit the site. Now, this is the version which I'm going to recommend you download-- Ubuntu 20.04.2.0 Long Term Support. This is the version I'm going to be using. So this is the version I would probably recommend you go with, too. So what we want to do here is click on Downloads and just click Save File and OK. OK, so I've downloaded the image and I put into this folder called Ubuntu image. What I now want to do is to open my VMware and to create this virtual machine using this image.

1:07So let's open up VMware. What I want to do this time is to create a New Virtual Machine. And what I want to do is to browse to whatever this image is. So in my case, it's selecting the right image here, but if it isn't, just click Browse and go to the correct path. OK, so what I'm going to say here is Next. OK, so all I'm going to do is give my VM a name. I'm just going to say ipvzero, and the username, I'll just call it ipvzero again. And then give the VM a password. This will effectively be your pseudo password. And just confirm it. Click Next. So what is the VM name? Just call it anything you want.

1:38I'll just call this Automation Ubuntu. Or anything you want, really, will work. Now again, I'm running low on my C drive, so I'm going to actually install this into my D drive. So I'll go to Browse and I've actually created a folder called Automation Ubuntu, so I'm going to go to my D drive here and go into Automation Ubuntu and just click OK. OK, so I'm going to say Next. What is the maximum disk size? And if you want, I'll just give it 30 to give it plenty of space. Just say Next. Now again, here is the options that's been given to me, but you can customize this if you want.

2:09If you have more memory, then you can kind of mem it up as high as you want. I'm just going to leave it at 4 gigabytes. The network adapter, again, is going to be NAT, the same as what we have for our EVE-NG. OK, let's go Close and I'll just say Finish. That looks OK to me. And what this is going to do is go through a basic automated easy installation of this Ubuntu server. So all we really need to do right now is sit back for maybe five, 10, 15 minutes, however long your computer takes, to create this image, and then once it's done, we can go in and begin setting things up.

2:40OK, now once that's done, you should see a screen just like this. What I'm going to do is just click on this. This is my username. And I'm going to type in the password which I created at the very start. Hit Enter, and it's going to log me in. All I'm going to do is click Skip here, and Next, Next, Next, and then Done. Now, the software update that has come up, I'm just going to say Remind Me Later, and then I'm going to go down to the bottom left hand corner here, click this, and then I'll just search for Terminal. Hit Enter, open my terminal up. OK, now to make this a little bit easier to read, I'm going to go here, click on Preferences.

3:13I'll go down to Unnamed, I'll choose Custom fonts. I'll maybe choose something like Noto Mono Bold and I'll auto up. And I'll use a plus sign to make the text a little bit bigger and easier to see. Hit to Select and just Exit out of this. OK, so what I want to say here is sudo apt update, and I'll type in my password, and I'll say sudo apt install openssh-server. Hit Enter and push Y. Hit Enter again. OK, now what I also want to say is sudo apt get install python3-venv.

3:48Hit Enter, push Y, hit Enter again, perfect. And for the moment, this is all we need for our Ubuntu server. So the next thing we're going to do is to be able to install a VS code, which is going to be our integrated development environments. And this is where we're going to do all of our coding for all of our network automation. That is coming up next, and I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:09Hey guys, and welcome back. So in the previous Nugget, we had just installed our Ubuntu server, which is going to be our automation system. And in this Nugget, what we're going to do is install VS Code, which is going to be our IDE for development. Now, I'm going to present to you two ways in which you can install VS Code. You can do it locally on the machine here and login to the VM. Or you can install VS Code directly on the VM. I'm going to show you both ways, and you can choose which way you prefer. OK. Again, so what I'm going to do is go to my browser just now.

0:39And if I go to Google and just type VS Code, let's click the top link here. And what I'm going to choose is Download for Windows. We're going to get this link. Just click Save. And now this is downloaded, let's click this to open it. And I'm going to Accept the Agreement. Click this, and choose Next. Now, where do we want to install VS Code? Again, I'm going to move onto my D drive. But if you want to leave it onto your C drive, that's perfectly OK. So I'll scroll down, go to D drive. And I've got a folder called VS Code here created. So I'll choose OK, and select Next, choose Next again.

1:12And what I'll do is I'll choose the create a desktop icon. And I'll also select these options here to open with code. Just choose Next, and click Install. And VS Code is going to be installed into your machine. And that is all, so click Finish. And now VS Code is going to launch. OK, so what I'm going to do is suggest to you some of the extensions I feel that you should install. This is just going to make your life easier, and VS Code has a ton of cool extensions. So let me show you which ones I use. So let's just maximize this for now. If you to File, go down to Preferences, and then choose Extensions.

1:46Now, here are some of the extensions which I've installed. And you can just search for them here. So the theme I'm going to choose is Monokai Pro. So just click on this. Now, I'm going to suggest that you, perhaps, also use this theme, although you don't have to. But it will make it a little bit easier, because it means you're going to have the exact same color highlighting as I have on my screen. It will just make it easier to follow that you're typing the right thing. But if you want to choose another theme, say, for example, One Dark Pro, you can click on this, and just click Install. But in my case, I'm going to choose Monokai Pro.

2:17So let me just set the color theme, and choose Monokai Pro. So let me just move this back, delete this. Now, you certainly want to search for Python, and click Python here. This is going to give you IntelliSense, which is effectively all of your auto completion. So do you know what? I'll just uninstall this so I can reinstall it for you. So all you would do would be super simple. Just search for Python, and then click Install here. That's going to install it, simple as that. Now, the other one is Better Jinja. I would suggest you get this one.

2:47Again, I'll uninstall it just to show you. Again, all you need to do is click Install, and that's going to install. And the last one is this one here, Cisco iOS Syntax. I would suggest you search for this and also install this. We'll certainly be making use of these extensions throughout the course. OK. Now, the really important one, which I'm going to suggest you install, and this is needed to be able to login to our Ubuntu VM, is something called Remote SSH. And I found this one by review in a fallacy between Ogletree and Trevor. Trevor recommends this all the time, and I must say he was bang on the money with it.

3:18So if you just go here, and click Install for Remote SSH, now we also have the Remote SSH extension. OK, so now that we have the Remote SSH extension installed, here is what we're going to do. Let's go back to our Ubuntu VM and get the IP address. I'll just minimize this, move this over a little bit, and I'll go into my Virtual Machine here, type in the password. I'll just full screen this to make it a little bit easier. Clear the screen, we'll do ip adder. And here is the IP address. Here, 192.168.31.129.

3:52So what I want to do is to be able to login to this Virtual Machine using my Remote SSH from VS Code. So let's close this again. And what I want to do is, on the left hand side here, we see a Remote Explorer. If we click on this, what I want to do is select SSH targets. Now, I've already got a target here from a previous session. I'm just going to add a new one. And all I'm going to say is, SSH, and my username is ipvzero. And I'll do @ and type in the IP address 192.168.31.129 it was.

4:23And hit Enter, and hit Enter again. And its saying host has been added. OK, so what I'm going to do is right click this and Connect to Host in Current Window. And I'm going to choose the platform as Linux. It'll show me the SSH fingerprint. I'm going to say Continue. I need to enter the password. So I type in the password I created for that VM, which is the sudo password. Type it and hit Enter. And now, look at that, we've actually logged into the VM directly from Windows. So if we do an LS, we now have access to that VM directly from our VS Code.

4:54And what I can do is develop here. So if I want to create a new file, I can just say New File. And let me just Save this As. And you'll notice that it actually saving it within the path of the VM. Look all these folders. This is my Linux environment here. So let me just create a file, just called test1.py, hit Enter. And at the bottom right, its saying, do you want to install the recommended extensions for Python? We're going to say Install. Now, we need to reload the window for py lines to work. Now, because its reloaded, I've been prompted to re-enter the password for the VM. So I'll type in that password once again at the top, hit Enter.

5:26OK, let me just move this over here. And what I can say is, for i in range. And you can see, we've got all the auto-completion good on here. Just say 0 to 11, and we'll just print i. And if I push Control S, that's going to save the file. And here's the thing, if we go down to the terminal here, we do an ls. Look at this, we now have a new file here, test1.py, that's now being created from our Windows development box, directly onto our Ubuntu VM. So on this terminal down here, I can just say python3 test1.py, hit Enter.

5:58And its going to execute that script. So this is how we can install VS Code locally on Windows and just SSH into the VM. Now, if you don't want to do it this way, you can just directly install VS Code right onto the VM. So let me show you how you can do that as well. So let me just Minimize this. Let's open up the VM, and let me just login. And again, just before we install VS Code locally, if we do an ls, look here, we've actually created that test1.py file from our Windows machine. And you can just execute it from here, and there's that code there.

6:30OK, so what we're going to do here to install VS Code, we're going to use the Snap package manager. So what I'm going to say is, sudo snap install, dash dash, classic code. And I hit Enter, type in my password. Nope. Type in the password correctly, that would help. And now, it's going to install VS Code for us. Perfect. Now, the way we can open code is just type in the word code now, hit Enter. And that is going to launch Visual Studio Code. So now, we have the exact same platform directly installed on our Ubuntu VM. And we can create files just the same way.

7:00Create New File, Save it As. And let's just call this one test2.py. And again, in the bottom here, we want to click Install. And again, we want to install all of our extensions. Now, it's seen here, no Python interpreter is selected. So if you get this problem, we need to select the Python Interpreter. So just click this, and we're going to choose, in this case, then Python3. And then I'll reload the window. Perfect. And again, just the same as before. And before I do anything, what I'm going to say is going to Settings, Preferences, Settings. And I'll change the font size to be a little bit bigger so its easier to see.

7:32Let's choose 24. OK. And again, what I want to do is use Monokai Pro for the theme. Let me just Install this, perfect. Click on this here. And again, what we can say is print, I love CBT Nuggets. Control S to Save. If we go back to our terminal, we do an ls, we have our test2.py file. Let's just run it. And there we have it. So we've seen how we can install VS Code directly onto Windows. And we can Remote SSH into our Ubuntu system. Or alternatively, if you find it easier just to install VS Code directly on the Linux box, you can do that too.

8:07Which one is better? Well, there really isn't a better one. Whatever you prefer is OK. So now that we have our Eve-NG running, we have our images installed, we have a development environment, and our Ubuntu box set up. Let's see how we can build a simple topology within Eve-NG and reach those machines from within this development box on Ubuntu. And that is what we're going to be doing in the very next Nugget. So I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:09Hey guys, and welcome back. So in the previous Nugget, we had just installed VS Code within our automation system or Ubuntu VM. Now, what we want to do is to be able to build a topology and be able to reach those devices from that automation system. Let's see how we can do that then. OK, so let me just open back up this virtual machine. And what I'm going to do is also right click on this VMware and choose another VMware. And what I want to do here is switch on the EVE-NG. If you click on this, and Play this virtual machine.

0:41So we have both of the VMs up and running, EVE-NG on the left and our Ubuntu on the right. OK, so I'll just say root Eve, and let's go to our browser and browse to the EVE-NG address of 128. OK, so let's login. OK, so from now what I want to do here, is just right click, and I'll choose two nodes. And what I'll do is, I'll take an Arista device so you can see how that is done. And I'll also take a Cisco Router and Save here. And I'll also take a Cisco Switch. This can just be my out of band Management Switch here. I'll choose Switch, and I'll just change the icon here.

1:13You don't have to do this, but I'll just change it to another icon. So it's that out of band one, and I'll change the name to Management Switch. OK, so let me Save this. So this is going to be my Management Switch. These two devices are going to be the actual network which I'm trying to reach. So what I want to do, in the case of the Cisco device, just connect it to one of the interfaces. So in this case, I'm going to connect from g0/0 to g0/0, that's fine. Now, in the case of the Arista device, that actually has a Dedicated Management Interface, which actually saves us a little bit of configuration. It's quite cool.

1:43So connect this, and instead, we want to choose the MGMT1 interface. And let's just also connect these two devices together. Let's pretend this is the actual network. So we'll just do Eth1 here to g0/1. That'll do fine. Now, the way we can reach into this VM, what we have to do is right click, and choose Network. And we need to choose ManagementCloud0. So if we Save this and connect this to our Management Switch here, and push Save. What I'm going to do is just say More and Start All Nodes. I'll give this a few minutes to let them boot up.

2:15OK, so let's go into the Cisco device first, and I'll hit Enter. I'll say No. OK, so I'll say Enable will give our device a hostname. So I'll just say hostname and just call it CiscoRouter. I want to give a username. So I'll say username john, which is my name. I'll say it privilege 15, and I'll say the password is equal to password1. I'll create a domain name. So I'll say, ip domain-name, and I'll just go with cisco.com. I'll say ip ssh version 2. I'll say crypto key, generate rsa, modulus 1024.

2:48I'll go into my vty line. So line vty 0 4. I'll say transport inputs ssh, and I'll say login local. Now let me just exit back, and I'll say vrf definition MGMT. I'll say address family ipv4. And then what I want to do is to go into my Management Interface. So in this case, this is going to be g0/0. So I'll say int g0/0. I'll say vrf forwarding and then the name of the vrf, which is MGMT.

3:20And now what I want to do is to create an out of band management IP address. Now, the management range I'm going to choose is going to be the same that is within this range up here. So within the 192.168.31.0/24 for me. So let's say, for example, your EVE-NG was 192.168.56.119, you would want to use the IP address space 192.168.56.0/24. Mine says 31, so I'm going to be using that for my management range. So I'll do ip address, 192.168.31, and I'll just say 101, and give it a slash 24 mask, and then say no shut.

3:59And if I just do wr to save this, that should be me there. So what I could do now is to ssh into this device from my Ubuntu machine. So again, you've got two options. You can use your remote ssh here to login or connect to host, type in the password for the Ubuntu machine. And now I'm inside the Ubuntu VM. I'll just login this way and use the terminal directly from the box. Whatever way you prefer is OK. So for simplicity, I'll just go directly to the machine here, and I'll maximize this to make it a little bit easier to see. Now, what I want to do is try to ping that machine.

4:30Now remember, if I do my IP address, we actually are on the same network. Can you see that? We're in the 192.168.31/24. This address happens to be 129, whereas my EVE-NG machine happens to be 128, and the Cisco box is 101. So if I do ssh, and the Cisco device has a username of john. And I'll do 192.168.31.101, hit Enter. Now look at this. This is a very common problem when using Cisco devices, because they use out of date ciphers.

5:03So the way we can fix this is say, sudo nano /etc/ssh/ssh_config, type in the passwords. And what I'm going to do here, I'm going to uncomment StrictHostKeyChecking. And I'll change this to No. These are some settings I like. I'll uncomment out these ciphers here and at the very bottom. Now, what I'm going to say down here is KexAlgorithms space, and then a +diffie-hellman-group14-shar1.

5:34And then if I press Control-O to write out and then Control-X to escape, clear here. Now if I try to login ssh john@192.168.31.101. Now, if I just take the password, which is password1, we have successfully logged into the device through ip int brief, and now we can reach our topology from our automation system, which means we can run scripts against our topology. So that was the Cisco device. How do we get access to the Arista device? Well, let's quickly do that as well.

6:05So I'll just exit out here. Now, Arista make it really, really easy. We don't have to configure a VRF because the management interface here is already within its own VRF. And the good news is, is the ssh is already enabled. The only thing we have to worry about here, is if we say admin, again we're going to say enable, and for the first time we're going to say zerotouch cancel, again. This is going to reboot the box. Once it comes back up, though, we're not going to have this issue. Just give us a minute or two to reload. OK, perfect. So I want to say admin again. To login, I'll just say enable, conf t, and we'll just say hostname.

6:39And we'll just call this one AristaRouter. Now again, we don't have to configure a VRF within Arista, and we don't have to enable ssh. All I'm going to do is create a username. So I'll say username john, privilege 15, and I'll say secret password1. There we go. And then what I want to do is to go into interface management 1, which is the management interface. And again, I want to give that an address within that same range. So my range is going to be 192.168.31, and then just choose an IP address.

7:09I'll say 102 for this one, and give it a slash 24 mask, and no shut it. And then what I can do is just Save this with the wr, and this has been successfully saved. Now again, if we go back to our Ubuntu VM, go back here, and just clear the screen. And if we just say ssh john, and then we do 192.168.31.102, hit Enter. Type in the password of password1. Now we have access to the Arista device. So show ip int brief. There we go. Show run. No problem at all. So because we have ssh access to these devices, we can now target them for automation, no problem at all.

7:44So this is how we can set up our configuration locally, where we can have devices local on a machine and our EVE-NG VM. However, but also as another option available to us, and that is in the form of the Cisco DevNet Sandboxes. And that is what we're going to be looking at next. So I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:10Hey, guys, and welcome back. So in the previous Nugget, we had just set up our EVE-NG Topology on our local machine. Now, what we want to do is to be able to explore how we can access devices via the internet. So let's check it out. Let's open up a new tab here, and you just Google Cisco DevNet Sandbox. And just click this top link here. Now, you're going to have to sign up to be able to access these. I've already signed up, so I'm going to click login. But if you haven't, sign up for free here. So click login, and I'm just going to log in with my IP Visio GitHub accounts.

0:42OK, so what I'm going to do is get started by Sandbox. OK, now, here's the thing. There are two types of Sandbox. We have the Always-ON Sandbox, and we have Reservable Sandbox. The one we going to be exploring as Always-ON. The good news about this one is that it's always on. It requires no reservation at all. Anyone can access it at anytime. You don't have to book anything. You don't have to have a VPN connection. Your simple internet connection will be able to get you into the device quite [INAUDIBLE].. The limitation of using an Always-ON Sandbox is that you're just getting access to one device.

1:14So it's OK in a limited form. You can test out pushing some configurations to a device. Feel your automation system. But if you really want to automate it to a large topology, you're going to be want to use something, like EVE-NG, or perhaps, reserve an actual Sandbox. Because when you reserve a Sandbox, what you're going to be able to do is to access multiple devices. But for now, all we're going to be doing as looking at the easily accessible Always-ON Sandbox. So dependent on the type of device you want, you can look for an XE device. You can look for an XR device, or maybe, perhaps, you can look for an NX device.

1:47This is our Nexus devices for the data center. The reality is you can just browse through the Sandbox and find what you like. For an example, let me access an XE Sandbox. So I will just search for XE. These ones here are Reservable Sandboxes. This means you're going to have to download the Cisco VPN, and connect 10 via a VPN, and book a time slot. But in the case of the Always-ON, we can just access it directly from an internet connection. So let's just choose one of these then, so we'll choose the iOS XE CSR recommended Always-ON.

2:17Click this. And if we scroll down here, it's going to tell us the login details. So as opposed to typing a numerical IP address, if we just take this address here, and as opposed to accessing it over port 22, we're going to access over SSH 8181. If we log in with the name, developer, and the password, C1sco12345, with the number one as the I, we can access this Always-ON Sandbox. So let me show you this, so all I'm going to do is get out my virtual machine. OK, so let's clear here.

2:49And what I'm going to do is copy this address here, so copy here. And I'm going to say, SSH, and the login name is Developer, here. And just paste the address. And because it's not on the default port, or port 22, I'm going to have say, P8181. So if I hit enter, and I type in the password of C1sco12345 with a one for the I, so C1sco12345. Hit enter. Now, I've logged into this device, so I can say show IP int brief.

3:19I can say, show run. Scroll on through, and I can also configure things, like, say, router ospf 46. And if I just do a show run, that's now going to be configured on the box. Scroll on down. There, we can see a router ospf 46 is actually been configured. So this is a real easy way, where we can access to the device online and push our automation scripts to that device. And this requires no more setup than simply getting the login details and just ssh into that box. Now, all I will say is that not every box has the same credentials, so what you should do is look for each box individually.

3:52So if you go into an XR box, this is going to have a different login than, for example, this XE box. Same way with the Nexus devices. Okie doke, so I do think we now have some viable options to set up labs. We have all the building blocks in place to begin automating networks. So from now on, how about we start doing the fun stuff and begin automating? Well, step on ahead to the next skill. That's what we're going to be doing, and I hope this has been informative for you. And I'd like to thank you for viewing.