Download cisco ios images and use in gns3

Cisco Website Cisco Access required to download images from cisco website. Next screen allows us set the RAM size for this device. By default wizard automatically allocates the minimum recommended memory RAM for device.

But if require, we can adjust it to match with our specific requirement. Click Idle-PC finder button and use the suggested value in this field. How to install GNS3 step by step Process. Select New Image option and click Browse button. Now select the downloaded IOS image file which you want to use for your lab. GNS3 supports both type of files compressed and decompressed and by default IOS files are compressed.

If GNS3 asked to decompress the file, select no. Click next and continue the Wizard. If selected IOS belongs to an outdated device, wizard may display a warning message. In real life, using an outdated device is not recommended. Now wizard extracts the hardware information platform and chassis number form selected IOS file and lists it in next screen along with an automatically populated device name. Its simple purpose is to run the emulation of your devices in a centralized point: this saves you a lot of resources.

As simple as that. Trust me, you are going to save tons of computational resources on this. However, this is not all: you add support for L2 devices.

Yes, this means you can have a manageable switch in your topology. In fact, it was developed by the same team and you can download it for free from their download page. The download link for the VM is quite small, as in the picture below. However, in our last article, we have already used VirtualBox since it is the only free option we have.

Therefore, you can simply select VirtualBox. Since this tutorial will show you the steps to do that with VirtualBox, you need to have it installed. This download will give you a compressed file. You can simply un-zip it with our favorite tool like 7zip , and you will find an OVA file in it. OVA is a special file format that contains Virtual Appliances. Each file contains all the details for a virtual machine: its software, virtual disks, and resource settings.

It is like receiving a physical PC with all the needed software already on it. However, this is virtual: much simpler. As a result, you will see an orange box icon next to the file. Just double-click on the file to open it. This will open VirtualBox and launch the Import Wizard: a window that looks like the following one.

Here you can check all the settings, and eventually modify some. The import will last a few seconds, then you will have to click on Finish. And this is it. When starting, GNS3 will raise a pop-up asking to configure a local server: today we are going to do it, and get rid of that pop-up forever. You will be able to follow this tutorial anyway. Here, be sure that you have selected the first option: Run modern IOS , which should be the default. Then, click Next to move to the following step. At this point, the Wizard will ask you to configure a Local Server.

Here, change the Host Binding to This will ensure you will have GNS3 always working, even if you are offline. In case you receive a failure message , navigate to the path specified in Server path and run gns3server. Here, you just have to select VirtualBox. GNS3 will automatically search in your list of Virtual Machines for the right one. You can continue the setup-with no problem. At this point, you are going to have a recap window, where you can click Finish.