EVE-NG in the Cloud

EDIT: (Feb 28, 2021) THIS IS OUTDATED CONTENT

Please see this New Video Series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGs-v2ysJb5bUwWbXFypwr2BmPonTTOER

Please see this new blog post here: https://showipintbri.github.io/blog/eve-ng-in-gcp

I've been running EVE-NG (http://www.eve-ng.net/) locally as a VM on an old PC I use as an ESXi server for about 6 months. It works great and I've really been loving it lately.

In preparing for CCIE Lab exam I've needed to build and run very large topologies. The amount of resources you need will very greatly based on the virtual images you require. I have found the Cisco IOL images to use the fewest resources and run the most reliably. If your working towards Data Center, Service Provider or other exam tracks you'll likely need more than Cisco IOL and will need to run IOS-XRv, Nexus images, CSR1000v's or others which will consume many more resources.

The topologies I'm working from are the Foundation Labs, Troubleshooting and Full-Scale labs from INE's CCIE v5 Routing and Switching workbook. These labs vary from 14 virtual devices to 24 virtual devices. Specifically the version I'm working with uses the IOSv images which consumes many resources during boot and while running compared to Cisco IOL images.

The resources I have at home in my old PC I'm using as an ESXi server is limited and I needed more resources available to run the larger topologies. This brought me to seeking a way to run EVE-NG on scalable and expandable resources.

All initial credit goes to Arwin Reprakash from https://ithitman.blogspot.com/2018/04/configuring-eve-ng-on-google-compute.html, documenting the process and sharing.

If you have a Gmail account you can activate Google Cloud for your account and get $300 FREE, from Google to spend on their resources.

You might be asking yourself: "How much will $300 get me?"

The cost varies based on the resources you consume.

If you're running IOL images you can get away with one of the lower tiers and leave your VM on for 24 hours/day for nearly a YEAR without paying a dime!!!

If you need to consume more resources obviously it will decrease your free $300 at a faster rate. 8vCPU's and 30GB memory you can run for 24 hours/day for about 40 days straight.

Juts for comparison I took a quick glance at what other vendors offer, here's a cost breakdown:

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have not vetted or tested all of these solutions, I'm listing them based on price comparison only. They each offer different solutions. Choose which ever is best for you!

Google Cloud: FREE $300 

(https://cloud.google.com)

• 1vCPU 3.75GB Memory = ~$26/Month (About 11 Months of continuous running)
• 4vCPU 4 GB Memory = ~$78/Month (About 3.8 Months of continuous running)
• 8vCPU 30 GB Memory = ~$195/Month (About 1.5 Months of continuous running)

Packet.net (Bare-Metal) NOT FREE

t1.small.x86: ($0.07/hr) [730 hours = $51.10] (https://www.packet.net/bare-metal/servers/t1-small/)

• 8 GB of DDR3 RAM
• 80 GB of SSD
• 4 Physical Cores @ 2.4 GHz (1 × Atom C2550)

c1.small.x86 ($0.40/hr) [730 hours = $292.00] (https://www.packet.net/bare-metal/servers/c1-small/)

• 32 GB of DDR3 ECC RAM
• 120 GB of SSD (2 × 120 GB in RAID 1)
• 4 Physical Cores @ 3.5 GHz (1 × E3-1240 v5)

m2.xlarge.x86 ($2.00/hr) [730 hours = $1460.00] (https://www.packet.net/bare-metal/servers/m2-xlarge/)

• 384 GB of DDR4 ECC RAM
• 120 GB of Redundant SSD (2 × 120 GB in RAID 1)
• 3.8 TB of NVMe Flash
• 28 Physical Cores @ 2.2 GHz (2 x Xeon Gold 5120)

Cloud My Lab: Free Trial

https://cloudmylab.com/cciers/#price
https://cloudmylab.com/eve-ng/#cycle-monthly

Configs:

Create the nested virtualization supported image based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS gcloud compute images create nested-virt-ubuntu --source-image-project=ubuntu-os-cloud --source-image-family=ubuntu-1604-lts --licenses="https://www.google.com/compute/v1/projects/vm-options/global/licenses/enable-vmx" Edit sshd_config to allow "root" user to login nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config !-change: PermitRootLogin yes PasswordAuthentication yes Change interface name to "eth0" nano /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules Reboot shutdown -r now Download the gpg.key, install the new repository, install eve-ng wget http://www.eve-ng.net/repo/eczema@ecze.com.gpg.key apt-key add eczema@ecze.com.gpg.key apt update add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] http://www.eve-ng.net/repo xenial main" apt update apt-get install eve-ng apt-get install eve-ng Remove the 4.15 Kernel, use only 4.9 eve-ng Kernel cd /boot/ mkdir ./old/ mv *4.15* ./old/ Edit grub sed -i -e  's/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=.*/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="net.ifnames=0 noquiet"/' /etc/default/grub update-grub Create a new non-root user: sudo adduser showipintbri sudo usermod -a -G sudo shoipintbri Disable root from sshing nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config !-change: PermitRootLogin no