Courtesy - Ivan Pepelnjak
Junosphere, a great network-in-the-Clouds solution from Juniper. You might be familiar with Olive, the “non-existent” way of running Junos on an x86 machine (including a VM); Junosphere is the supported version of the same concept, including a real forwarding plane (it’s my understanding Olive lacks that, which makes certain protocols behave in unexpected ways).
Compared to other similar offerings (including our remote labs and Cisco’s IOS-in-a-Cloud), Junosphere has several significant advantages:
You can create your own topologies that include as many routers as you need, allowing you to recreate complex routing/migration scenarios. Although the topology file format is a bit arcane at the moment, I had no problems creating my own topologies (but you already know I’m more than a bit crazy). For saner people, there’s a tool that can take your OSPF or IS-IS database and turn it into a Junosphere topology.
The VJX1000 router (Junos-in-a-VM) supports Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and Junosphere allows you to connect them together with simple virtual bridges. Think of those bridges as cables/hubs; unlike Dynamips, Junosphere bridges have no explicit VLAN support or access/trunk links. Serial or POS interfaces are also not available.
You can access your virtual routers directly using Juniper’s SSL VPN solution. After starting the SSL VPN connection, you can use SSH to connect to the devices or SCP to copy files to/from them.
Obviously, once you have SSH up and running, you can test all sorts of Junos automation/SDK tricks (starting with NETCONF).
You can connect physical devices to Junosphere. A Junosphere connector (a VM running in VMware environment – be it VMware Player, Workstation or ESX) can establish a link between any Junosphere bridge and an interface (vNIC) in your workstation/hypervisor host. You can use it to connect Junosphere LAN to your physical interface or to anything else VMware player can use (including a tap interface of a Linux box ... you do know why that’s interesting, don’t you?).
Unfortunately, somehow the SSL VPN Java applet didn’t work on my Linux machine (Fedora 14 with Firefox 3.6.23) where I run all the other simulation stuff; I had to use Internet Explorer on my Windows laptop to connect to the labs.
You can load and save your topologies and configurations. This was one of the best features (from my perspective). The default configuration of the VJX routers includes an event trigger that transfers current configuration to a FTP server every time you execute a commit. Regardless of what you do, a copy of the configuration is always in a safe place and can be saved through the web-based UI and later copied (as a .tgz file) to your workstation.
You can choose the Junos release you want to run. At the moment, the set of releases you can choose from is fixed, but it does include a stable-and-supported release, an experimental release (11.4) and a few others.
You can run other VMs in the same sandbox, including Centos servers, Junos Space and a few test tools.
Do I like Junosphere? Absolutely. Are there any drawbacks? Sure, like every other system Junosphere has a few glitches, from UI that could use some improvements to minor configuration nuisances that can play havoc with the configuration saving feature ... but the major roadblock is the current pricing and go-to-market strategy.
The current list price for Junosphere is $5/router/day (Amazon’s small EC2 instance costs $2.04 per day and is charged by the minute), and you can only purchase it through regular Juniper’s sales channels (including partners). That makes perfect sense if you’re working on a customer demo, proof-of-concept or a migration scenario for a large enterprise network ... and you have direct contact with Juniper or got Junosphere access as a deal closing sweetener. But do you really think a Juniper partner would be interested in getting a $250 purchase order for a 10-day access to a 5-router Junosphere environment? How about a simple use-your-credit-card approach Cisco is using with its e-learning labs?
The per-day charging model is another pain point. With proper preparation, planning and scheduling, the current model could work for me or someone who has to get fluent with Junos really fast to support the next project. Obviously I would be throwing away more than two thirds of the allotted time because I’m too old to work on the routers for more than 8-10 hours a day, but paying $50/day (10-router topology) for something that helps you earn real money shouldn’t be a showstopper.
However, I really like the ability to run a lab for an hour or so to test the next idea that hatched in the back of my brains while I was working on something else. Paying for the whole day just to be able to test a few things might not be too expensive in absolute terms, but definitely feels like a total waste of money.
Juniper’s marketing is doing a great job trying to persuade networking engineers to embrace Junos – from Day One books to Junos as a second language and FastTrack programs. It’s too bad they’re not making the final step and getting everyone interested in kicking some Junos tires (or working really hard on mastering another platform) a simple on-demand access to live Junos environment.
Junosphere, a great network-in-the-Clouds solution from Juniper. You might be familiar with Olive, the “non-existent” way of running Junos on an x86 machine (including a VM); Junosphere is the supported version of the same concept, including a real forwarding plane (it’s my understanding Olive lacks that, which makes certain protocols behave in unexpected ways).
Compared to other similar offerings (including our remote labs and Cisco’s IOS-in-a-Cloud), Junosphere has several significant advantages:
You can create your own topologies that include as many routers as you need, allowing you to recreate complex routing/migration scenarios. Although the topology file format is a bit arcane at the moment, I had no problems creating my own topologies (but you already know I’m more than a bit crazy). For saner people, there’s a tool that can take your OSPF or IS-IS database and turn it into a Junosphere topology.
The VJX1000 router (Junos-in-a-VM) supports Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and Junosphere allows you to connect them together with simple virtual bridges. Think of those bridges as cables/hubs; unlike Dynamips, Junosphere bridges have no explicit VLAN support or access/trunk links. Serial or POS interfaces are also not available.
Just keep adding topologies
You can access your virtual routers directly using Juniper’s SSL VPN solution. After starting the SSL VPN connection, you can use SSH to connect to the devices or SCP to copy files to/from them.
Obviously, once you have SSH up and running, you can test all sorts of Junos automation/SDK tricks (starting with NETCONF).
You can connect physical devices to Junosphere. A Junosphere connector (a VM running in VMware environment – be it VMware Player, Workstation or ESX) can establish a link between any Junosphere bridge and an interface (vNIC) in your workstation/hypervisor host. You can use it to connect Junosphere LAN to your physical interface or to anything else VMware player can use (including a tap interface of a Linux box ... you do know why that’s interesting, don’t you?).
Unfortunately, somehow the SSL VPN Java applet didn’t work on my Linux machine (Fedora 14 with Firefox 3.6.23) where I run all the other simulation stuff; I had to use Internet Explorer on my Windows laptop to connect to the labs.
You can load and save your topologies and configurations. This was one of the best features (from my perspective). The default configuration of the VJX routers includes an event trigger that transfers current configuration to a FTP server every time you execute a commit. Regardless of what you do, a copy of the configuration is always in a safe place and can be saved through the web-based UI and later copied (as a .tgz file) to your workstation.
You can choose the Junos release you want to run. At the moment, the set of releases you can choose from is fixed, but it does include a stable-and-supported release, an experimental release (11.4) and a few others.
You can run other VMs in the same sandbox, including Centos servers, Junos Space and a few test tools.
Do I like Junosphere? Absolutely. Are there any drawbacks? Sure, like every other system Junosphere has a few glitches, from UI that could use some improvements to minor configuration nuisances that can play havoc with the configuration saving feature ... but the major roadblock is the current pricing and go-to-market strategy.
The current list price for Junosphere is $5/router/day (Amazon’s small EC2 instance costs $2.04 per day and is charged by the minute), and you can only purchase it through regular Juniper’s sales channels (including partners). That makes perfect sense if you’re working on a customer demo, proof-of-concept or a migration scenario for a large enterprise network ... and you have direct contact with Juniper or got Junosphere access as a deal closing sweetener. But do you really think a Juniper partner would be interested in getting a $250 purchase order for a 10-day access to a 5-router Junosphere environment? How about a simple use-your-credit-card approach Cisco is using with its e-learning labs?
The per-day charging model is another pain point. With proper preparation, planning and scheduling, the current model could work for me or someone who has to get fluent with Junos really fast to support the next project. Obviously I would be throwing away more than two thirds of the allotted time because I’m too old to work on the routers for more than 8-10 hours a day, but paying $50/day (10-router topology) for something that helps you earn real money shouldn’t be a showstopper.
However, I really like the ability to run a lab for an hour or so to test the next idea that hatched in the back of my brains while I was working on something else. Paying for the whole day just to be able to test a few things might not be too expensive in absolute terms, but definitely feels like a total waste of money.
Juniper’s marketing is doing a great job trying to persuade networking engineers to embrace Junos – from Day One books to Junos as a second language and FastTrack programs. It’s too bad they’re not making the final step and getting everyone interested in kicking some Junos tires (or working really hard on mastering another platform) a simple on-demand access to live Junos environment.
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