I haven’t worked with Cumulus in production, although it’s been a passive interest for a while now. JUNOS, too, although I don’t have a Juniper virtual device on this list currently. I’ve worked with both EOS and NX-OS in production environments.
I have no personal allegiance to any of these operating systems. The list is vendor-neutral, sorted alphabetically. Use those same channels if you just want to tell me I’m wrong about whatever you come across in this post that’s…you know…wrong. Make sure your recommendations are for images which are freely available from the vendor for lab use with no licensing requirements or other strings attached. Let me know on the Packet Pushers Slack channel or Twitter DM, and I’ll do additional posts or update this list over time. My goal is to clearly document what these images are and how to obtain them, as this data is less obvious than I’d like.
Here’s my current list of no cost, minimal headache, easily obtainable networking images that work in a virtual lab environment such as EVE-NG or GNS3.
