How do you manage your labs?

[kamilazat]

Hello everyone.

I'm sure many of you are working for/with customers who have different environments with different configurations. And many times we need to do testing in our labs for a specific case and configuration. Some customers have issues with MDS, VSX, some have R81.10, some have already started using R82 in prod, some have issues with specific JHF, some intergrate AD in a specific way etc.

It is virtually impossible to create a new lab for every single test case, not only because of the resource limitations but also because of the time it takes to set eveything up. So I want to ask all of you.

How do you manage labs where you have to test all those different cases?

Cheers!

[the_rock · Accepted solution]

eve-ng my friend, its the BEST! :). You literally spin up the labs in no time. I actually counted for different vendors and here are my times.

Aruba - 3 mins

Fortinet - 3 mins

PAN - 2 mins

CP -5 mins

Cisco - 3 mins

SilverPeak - 6 mins

Andy

[kamilazat]

@the_rock Thank you for being the only one to answer 🙂 

I also remember reading that you were experiencing some issues with the drivers and discussing it with Tim Hall, though can't find that post. I mean you wouldn't be still using if it were too problematic, but still would love to get your opinion.

[the_rock]

Trust me man, its NOT problematic at all, is great! Yes, I recall the discussion, but cant find it now myself either. It had to do with type of NIC, but I will respond a bit later once I connect to web gui of eve-ng.

Andy

[the_rock]

Below are choices for NIC type you get. I always use vmxnet3, seems to work best.

Andy

virtio-net-pci
e1000
i82559er
rtl8139
e1000-82545em
vmxnet3