HI,
In the new CCNP Enterprise course, are there any preconfigured virl/gns3 labs? , or do we have to always build the topology and copy\paste the initial configs?
regards
Hello Walter,
At the moment, we only have the āshow runā files.
I used to supply GNS3 startup / final config files on gns3vault.com but itās always a hassle. First we had GNS3 1.x, then with 2.x they used different files.
Today we have VIRL 1.x, in a few months they release 2.x and you might have to convert topology files.
EVE-NG is popular too but who knows, maybe in 2-3 years we have something else.
In a nutshell, regular Cisco IOS / XR / XR / ASA commands always work while supplying files for all possible emulators is an administrative nightmare 
Rene
Hi Rene,
i totally understand, thank you.
i have received the payment notification from networklessons 29$ monthly payment
thank you for making the changes.
regards
Hi RenƩ,
Are all the lessons for ccnp encore updated and completed? If not will there be a notification that all the lessons are updated and added?
Hello Walter,
Most of it yes. There are still some network automation topics i have to add and update some of the older material. It will take a few weeks (and feedback from people) to get everything to 100%.
When I release new lessons, you can find them here:
I also update the feedback board:
Rene
Good day Rene\laz
when will the āāstartup-configsāā for the old lessons be uploaded at the beginning of every lessons before the final configurations?, it makes it kind of difficult to determine which is the startup config and which is the final config, I have to paste the final config in notepad and highlight the start-up config from the final config.
i see the new lessons already have the start-up configs, and thank you for that!
WN
Hello Walter
I know that Rene is working on getting those configs up for the newer lessons as you saw, and heāll be preparing them for the older lessons as well. I donāt know what the timeframe for this is, but Iāll ask him to get back to you soon.
Laz
Hi Rene, Walter,
Iāve been subscribing to Networklessons.com for a few months and have been working towards my ENCOR. The content of it is great because it saves you a lot of time from gleaning info from cisco and other sites. What makes your course really stand out is gns3vault.com. However the pre-configuration of each lab, although being very simple, really adds up. Is there a way to upload the gns3 project files on it ? Or is there a way to cut and paste the pre-configurations onto each router of each lab ?
Iāve a father of two kids and really want to speed things up a little.
These are the images Iāve been using:
i86i-linux-l3-adventerprisek9-15.5.2T.bin
i86i-linux-l2-adventerprisek9-15.6.0.9S.bin
Sam
Hello Sam
Itās great to hear that you find the courses here helpful! Weāre doing our best to be as beneficial as possible to our readers. Concerning the preconfiguration of the labs, many of Reneās newer labs in the NetworkLessons lessons have the initial configuration of all devices at the beginning, and then the final configuration for all devices at the end. For example, take a look at this lesson:
You can take the configs of each device and copy and paste them into the CLI of each device.
As for the setup of GNS3vault, I believe that Rene is no longer updating that site. He may be able to respond more appropriately to your question, and he may have a more suitable solution for you, so I will relay your question to him as well.
Fatherhood is a wonderful experience, and it can be quite demanding so I understand your need for streamlining the process. I hope the above and any other response from Rene will make things easier for you!
I hope this has been helpful!
Laz
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Hello Sam,
I understand the challenge of combining being a parent and getting things done 
I have a two and a four-year-old.
When I started networklessons.com, I stopped creating more content for GNS3Vault. Itās much easier to create tutorials and walkthroughs, than labs. Creating a lab is simple, but keeping it up-to-date is a challenge.
First, we had GNS3 1, then 2.x. The config files changed, so I had to migrate all of them. Then we had Cisco VIRL, which has been replaced by Cisco CML. We also have EVE-NG nowadays. Tomorrow, and the 1-5 years after, itāll be something else.
The best advice I can probably give you is to create some ātemplatesā:
- two routers.
- three routers in a triangle.
- a larger topology with 6-8 routers with different links.
- three switches in a triangle.
- four switches in a square.
Configure these with hostnames, IP addresses, and two loopback interfaces each.
Once you get to the more advanced stuff, create templates for iBGP, eBGP, MPLS-VPN, etc.
Youāll be able to configure 95% of the examples in the lessons, without wasting too much time. This is how I do it myself.
Rene
Thanks Laz and Rene for your reply! It good to see online lessons creator replying Iāve watched more of Rene than Netflix / Youtube / TV combined recently, feels like a Iām getting attention from a Hollywood star.
I was going to go through the topologies of all labs on gns3vault to find out how many of these āvanilla templatesā there are, thanks for providing the info.
btw, I tried all these switch images (see list below) I could find, they could all boot up fine under GNS3 but for some reasons I couldnāt pass on VLANs from server to client with VTP (not password configured).
IOUs:
i86bi-linux-l2-adventerprisek9-15.6.0.9S.bin
i86bi-linux-l2-ipbasek9-15.1a.bin
i86bi-linux-l3-adventerprisek9-15.5.2T.bin
QEMUs:
vios_l2-adventerprisek9-m.03.2017.qcow2
vios_l2-adventerprisek9-m.ssa.high_iron_20200929.qcow2
vIOS-L2.vmdk
Iāve looked everywhere for help including reddit, stackexchange,GNS3 forumā¦etc., . nobody answered me. I know 10 years ago switch operating systems werenāt visualized, but now it seems like they are .
I also tried to make it work by disabling routing with no ip routing to no avail.
Would eve-ng be better ?
Sam
Hello Sam
It seems that on GNS3, the particular feature of VTP is something thatās difficult to get working. I have found this very recent post about the topic on the GNS3 forum that may be helpful to you:
https://gns3.com/community/featured/iosvl2-and-vtp-v3
It seems that others have found that the IOSvL2 images donāt run VTP successfully, and only some IOU images work. Specifically, it has been reported that:
For VTPv3, i86bi-linux-l2-ipbasek9-15.1g.bin and i86bi-linux-l2-adventerprisek9-15.1a.bin are fine.
I suggest you check those out to confirm them. If they donāt work, one additional thing you can do is do a packet capture to see if VTP messages are indeed being sent.
Now having said all of this, it has been reported that EVE-NG does support VTP with little hassle. In general, EVE-NG is known to provide Layer 2 support for a wider range of features. It may be worth looking into.
Another alternative is Ciscoās CML or VIRL, which tend to support most such features. More information on these emulators can be found at this NetworkLessons Note.
I hope this has been helpful!
Laz
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