Can Santa Deliver a Hummin' Dynamips Platform for Christmas?

The Beginning of Wendell's Journey Towards a Dedicated Dynamips Server

Bam! A quick idea about how something works on a router pops into your head. 5-10 clicks later, you're typing in the config you want to test, while waiting 5-10 minutes for one of your saved Dynamips pods to boot up. Soon, you're consoled in to the 12 routers in one of you standard topologies, tweaking a baseline config before testing out the config you just created for this latest brainstorm.

Many Cisco cert candidates have taken the time to learn Dynamips well enough to do exactly that - and I'm frankly a little bit jealous. I've finally got a little time to do something about it, and thought my journey towards getting serious with Dynamips might be of interest to ya'll - whether you learn from what I do, or whether you use your experience to help me get there with the least pain and suffering.

So, here's the backstory. We probably all have a list of work-related things we'd like to do if there was ever some time available. Well, as of today, I have a window of time with absolutely no writing projects hanging over my head - no deadlines, no one waiting on something from me. It's really weird - I frankly can't remember the last time I had such a window in between projects.  Sure, there's always something that needs to be written for my real job, but I've decided to try and tackle some of these "when I have some time" tasks. Maybe I'll even learn something unrelated to any particular book (gasp!) In my case, I'll have at least the whole month of December to catch up on things I've put off literally for years. I'm taking off Christmas week and the week after - a luxury in itself - plus a little time for other events, which gives me 12 days of work before Christmas. It's kinda my personal 12 days of Christmas. Part of the time I'll be learning how to use my new iMAC (I'll have to upgrade my PC clothes to look more like the MAC guy on the commercials).

(Also... if you're wondering what the whole Dynamips thing is about, check out this post, which gives an overview.)

Now on to today's story: When I've used Dynamips in the past, I never had time to dig in and learn it well, and I was already bumping into performance problems. So, in the next few months, maybe even before Christmas, I want to build a solid Dynamips platform. I want to be able to boot one or more OS images, bring up Dynamips, have it work well, with plenty of routers for CCIE level study, running just as fast from he CLI perspective as real gear. My second goal, which I think I can reach as a side effect of the first, is to build solid skills using Dynamips. I'll know if I was successful if I get to the point that building a new topology, building initial baseline configs, and saving the topology/configs is around the same time and effort on Dynamips as it is with real gear. That means I need to build some Dynamips skills, and it means I need a much better performing Dynamips platform.

So, let me paint the big picture first. When the dust settles, here's what I hope to have working in my home lab:

One (or more as needed) instances of Linux running on new server hardware

Reasonable performance when running 12-15 router images

Enough LAN adapters that support 802.1Q so that each router image can trunk to an external switch

The ability to restore a topology, from power-on to stable working IOS's, in 10 minutes

Ability to run Wireshark concurrent with the lab, to capture packets on any emulated LAN/WAN connection

Ability to run additional Linux instances on the same hardware as hosts inside the topologies

I have only a general idea if these are all reasonable goals, but you gotta have goals. I already know that I can't just put all this stuff on my current laptop. It's 3 year old technology, running XP (1 Ghz Pentiom 4 with 2.5 Gig RAM), and from past experience, I could never get past 3-4 router images working concurrently, even after all the Dynamips tuning stuff was set. So, I figure I need more hardware. Figuring out how much will be part of the fun. I also need some research and play time, but that should be fun. I also need to learn how to make Dynamips communicate outside the box - again, it appears to require only some reading/practice, plus some LAN NICs that support 802.1Q.

So, to start the journey, I'm going to take these next steps:

1) Research/choose a Linux flavor, choose/buy 802.1Q LAN NICs, and do a proof of concept on an old klonker PC. I want to see Linux installed, 1 router running, and communicating outside the PC using trunking to an external switch.

2) Research CPU, speed, and memory requirements, and then buy a rack-mount server. The tradeoff hear is to not overspend, but at the same time to make sure it has enough power to run the larger and busier topologies without bogging down.

Experienced folks, any suggestions? What am I missing? Inexperienced folks, what else would you want to look at when you embark on your similar journey? Jump in and give me your thoughts.

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