- In this video I'm gonna show you how to build
a brand new network using Cisco ASAS.
The reason I wanna use Cisco ASAs,
is that they are notoriously difficult to use
in products such as GNS3 and Eve-NG.
You have to go through a whole bunch of steps
to get a Cisco ASA working in GNS3, and Eve-NG,
but in Cisco VIRL you don't,
because it's very, very simple
to add devices to Cisco VIRL.
I'm gonna show you how to import the Cisco VIRL OVA
into the VMware Workstation Fusion.
In a previous video which I've linked here and below,
I showed you how to build a Cisco VIRL network
on a Windows 10 computer using VMware Workstation Player.
In this example I'm gonna be using a Mac,
so I'm gonna be using VMware Fusion.
The process is very very similar however.
I'm gonna show you how quickly I can import the OVA,
map the ISOs so that I have all the images in Cisco VIRL,
and then build a Cisco network using Cisco ASAS.
The process is very very simple using Cisco VIRL,
you can build this topology very, very quickly.
So I'm gonna show you from A to Z,
or as my American friends would say A to zee,
how to build a Cisco network using Cisco ASAs in Cisco VIRL.
Okay, let's get started.
(upbeat music)
♪ Let's go ♪
Okay so the first thing I need is the Cisco OVA.
I've already downloaded the Cisco VIRL OVA,
and I've also got the ISO.
So you need the OVA and the ISO which contains
all the Cisco images.
I'm not gonna bother downloading that,
because the speed of that will depend
on your internet connection.
I've also got a VMware Fusion installed on my Mac,
and as you can see here I've got a whole bunch
of virtual machines imported into VMware Fusion.
I've got Eve-NG, I've got GNS3, I've also got a VIRL2,
I've got Kali Linux, I've got ODL,
whole bunch of virtual machines,
but what I wanna show you here once again,
is how to get Cisco VIRL up and running on a Mac,
and how to configure an ASA network.
Once again, have a look at this video
if you've got a Windows computer,
and you wanna see the full detailed process
of how to get Cisco VIRL up and running.
Okay, so let's see how long it takes me now
to get Cisco VIRL up and running.
So I'm gonna add a new virtual machine.
I'm gonna import an existing virtual machine,
click Continue, I'm gonna choose the file
which is this VIRL OVA, click Open, click Continue,
I'm just gonna use the defaults.
Now I've already got a VIRL virtual machine,
so this will show up as a virtual machine two,
because I've already imported this previously.
So I'm gonna click Save.
Now, the virtual machine is imported.
Now because I get asked this question a lot,
let me show you the specifications of this Mac.
It's a MacBook Pro 15 inch 2018,
i9, 2.9 gigahertz Intel processor, I've got 32 Gig of RAM.
So that means that the defaults used by VIRL
of eight gig and four core CPUs is fine on my laptop,
but I'm still gonna click Customize settings,
and what I wanna do is select the CD/DVD,
and then I wanna choose the image
that gets used by this virtual machine.
If you don't select this ISO during the installation
of Cisco VIRL,
it'll complain and tell you that that ISO is not mapped.
You can bypass that warning and continue the installation,
but you essentially want this ISO
because it's got all the images including Cisco ASA.
So I'm gonna click Open,
Show All settings,
I could go and change my memory and CPU if I wanted to,
I'm not gonna do that,
I'm simply gonna close this
and start up the virtual machine.
Now, I am gonna upgrade this virtual machine,
you don't have to do that if you don't want to,
but I'm gonna do that anyway.
The VIRL virtual machine is now booting up.
Okay, so the virtual machine is attempting
to monitor all network traffic.
I have to give a permission to do that.
So I'm gonna put my password in,
GNS3, EVE-NG will do something similar,
you basically wanna be able to bridge this virtual machine
to the outside world,
so you wanna allow it to monitor traffic.
The initial system configuration dialog displays,
I'm gonna press Continue,
and I'm gonna go through the menu options very very quickly.
once again have a look at this video
if you wanna see the installation in a lot of detail.
I'm gonna accept the end-user license agreement.
I'm told that two system accounts will be created.
I'll have a Linux account and a web UI account,
that's okay, press Enter to continue.
I know the keystrokes, they are shown here,
like Control + P, Control + N, and tab.
I'm simply gonna press Enter to continue.
Now it's telling me,
and this is the error that I warned you about,
that the DVD ISO has not been attached,
and that's probably because I made the mistake
of not connecting the CD/DVD drive.
So I'm gonna select this option Connect CD/DVD Drive,
and I'm gonna press a Retry.
So it's worked now.
Just to prove the point, if I go back,
and go back again, this is the first menu option,
selecting accounts, press Continue, press Continue,
I'm now asked to set my first user account,
which is my Linux account.
I'm gonna simply set a password of Cisco one, two, three,
and press tab, press Enter to continue.
it warns me that my password is bad,
I'm gonna continue anyway.
Password is not strong, I'm gonna continue anyway.
I need to set the next user account,
which is my web UI account.
Default here are sysadmin for Linux, and admin for web UI.
I'm setting a password of Cisco one, two, three,
just to keep it simple,
obviously you wanna use a better password than that,
but that's okay for this lab, press Enter to continue,
accept that the password is bad, press Yes to continue.
VIRL can use DHCP or a static IP address.
I'm happy to use a DHCP address, so I'm gonna press Enter.
I'm shown a summary of the usernames that I've created,
sysadmin and admin, press Enter to confirm,
and there you go,
I've basically completed the installation of Cisco VIRL.
It's doing some stuff, restarting services such as NGINX.
I'm now told that the system is configured.
Press Enter to continue,
and notice the IP address
that this server is using is 10.0.0.177.
Okay, so I'm gonna start Chrome,
and I'm going to point my web browser
to https://10.0.0.177.
I'm told that my connection is not private.
I'm gonna go to advanced and click
Proceed to the IP address,
and notice I can now login with my username
of admin password Cisco one, two, three.
And there you go I've installed Cisco VIRL.
One last thing to do is to license of the server.
So I'm gonna hover my mouse over System Health issue,
Edit Settings, and I can now register my license.
You can also do this through the main menu option.
I'm gonna click Lab Manager to go back.
Notice under Tools, and Licensing,
I'm taken back to the same page.
So I can either go to System Health issue,
Edit Settings, or use the menu to get to this page.
I'm told that my license is unregistered,
it's an evaluation mode license.
Evaluation here means that you can use the VIRL interface,
create labs and so forth,
but you won't be able to boot up your devices.
So just be aware that an evaluation license
doesn't mean that you can run topologies,
it just means that you can use the software,
and build topologies,
but you won't be able to boot up your topologies.
I'm gonna click Register,
and I'm gonna paste in my token.
You would need to get this token from Cisco, click Register,
and notice it's registering with Cisco Smart Licensing.
Now that's been done, notice it says,
"Registered," and "Authorized."
I've now completed the installation of Cisco VIRL.
Going back to Lab Manager, I can add a new lab,
and let's call this ASA-Lab1,
and click on the lab,
and now all I need to do is drag in ASA into my topology.
What I'll do here is also add two routers to the topology.
I'll zoom in, you can simply use the wheel
on your mouse if you prefer, to zoom in and out.
I'll collapse this menu.
So here's my topology, I'll click on the first router,
click on this connector, drag it to the ASA,
so first Ethernet interface to first Ethernet interface
on the ASA, click on the ASA, click this connector,
drag it to the second router,
so second Ethernet interface to first Ethernet interface
on the router.
What we'll do in this topology is pretend
that this is the inside,
and pretend that this is the outside,
and I'll click on Simulate,
click Start Lab,
and as you can see there the topology is starting.
Notice this little icon.
Under Nodes you can see that these devices
have already started, they showing state Started.
Because the CPU and memory in this laptop are decent,
the devices start up fairly quickly.
You can see the CPU utilization.
If I click on the ASA, notice I've got a console,
click on that, click Open Console,
and as you can see there, my ASA is booting.
It was as simple as that to get an ASA up and running
in Cisco VIRL.
I'm gonna click on Auto to auto space the terminal.
I could have a look at the router also booting up,
second router, Open Console, it's also booting up,
go back to the ASA, and you can see it says "Rebooting."
As you can see here it says, "Platform ASA" booting up.
If I go to Connectivity I can see how the devices
are connected, but let's go back to the console,
and there you go,
I've got a Cisco ASA type EN.
Default password is not set, I need to set it,
so I'm gonna set it to Cisco, try again, and there you go,
I'm in privilege mode on the ASA.
Show interface question mark summary
shows me the interfaces on this ASA.
Okay, so there you go,
I've now got two routers and an ASA booted in Cisco VIRL.
So I'll bypass the initial configuration dialog
on the first router,
on the second router I'll also bypass
the initial configuration dialog,
press return to get started,
and I should have access to this device.
Now I'm not sure if you can hear this,
but my CPU on my Mac is going crazy.
This seems to be a problem with VMware Fusion on a Mac.
I've seen it on the VMware forums,
lots of people have issues where the CPU goes crazy
when using VMware Fusion on a Mac.
So the devices are booted now,
but you may hear a lot of noise from my Mac
because of the CPU.
This is not a VIRL issue,
I have this issue with GNS3,
with Eve-NG,
and simply running Windows VMs on my Mac.
It's a VMware Fusion issue on a Mac.
If any of you know of a solution to this
please put it in the comments below,
to help me in others with this issue,
where the CPU on a Mac spikes when I'm using VMware Fusion.
I've tried a whole bunch of things,
but it doesn't seem to work very well.
One of the options that I've seen on forums
is to uncheck Acceleration of 3D Graphics,
various other options haven't helped me much.
This is once again an issue on VMware Fusion.
But there you go I've now got a network up and running
in sauce go VIRL, using an ASA and two routers.
The only thing to do now is to configure the network
and test connectivity,
but notice how simple it was to get a network up and running
using Cisco ASA's in Cisco VIRL.
Okay, so to configure the ASA
I've got some configuration here,
which I've used in previous videos,
when I showed you how to configure an ASA in GNS3.
I'm essentially gonna set the outside interface,
and the inside interface,
I just need to confirm that that's actually
the interfaces that I'm using.
So let's rename this device
as outside router,
so router two,
and this device as inside router one.
So when I'll look at the ASA, and look at interfaces,
notice gigabit zero, zero, is on the inside,
and gigabit zero one is outside,
that is different to my configuration,
so I'll simply change that.
So outside is gigabit zero one,
once again per my interface diagram,
gigabit zero zero is the inside interface,
I've got a route to the outside,
I've got an object policy, and a policy map.
In this video I'm not discussing all the options
of how to configure a Cisco ASA,
have a look at other videos that show you that,
but what I'm gonna do is copy this configuration
to my Cisco ASA.
A question that I've been asked is,
"Can I have multiple console connections?"
The developers have told me that they are working on that,
there are other options where you can use secure CRT,
and other multi-tab options to connect to Cisco VIRL.
Okay, so on my ASA I'm going to...
paste the configuration,
and there you go the configuration has now been pasted.
We can see that gigabit zero one is the outside interface,
the security level is set to zero by default,
but I've set it to zero as well,
inside interface has its security set to 100,
I've no shut of those interfaces.
Now, the inside interface is in this subnet
10, one, one, zero slash 24.
Outside interface is using
eight dot, eight dot, eight dot, zero.
In this sort of little test network
I'm pretending that this router is Google.
So interface gigabit zero zero is connected to the ASA.
I just wanted to make sure about that, so...
No shut this interface IP address
eight dot, eight dot, eight dot, eight,
slash 24 mask.
IP route, default route will be the ASA.
IP address of the ASA is once again
eight dot, eight dot, eight dot, eight, two, five, four.
So back on the outside router,
default route to that
and I seem to have forgotten how to create a default route
so let's do that again,
and ping eight dot, eight dot, eight, dot two, five, four.
That works, I'll save the router configuration
on router one.
So this is the inside router, host router one,
interface gigabit zero zero, no shut it.
IP address 10.1.1.1 for argument's sake,
slash 24 mask.
Again I can go to Interfaces if I've forgotten
how the device is connected.
Back on the console, that works.
IP route default route
to the ASA, 10.1.1.1.254,
again click on the ASA,
I can see the IP address of the ASA.
Back on the router, that should hopefully work.
So can I ping 10.1.1.254?
Yes I can.
Can I ping Google
back on router two?
Notice this is the IP address I configured.
I can verify that by using show IP interface brief.
There's the IP address of the Google router.
So can I ping 8.8.8.8?
Yes I can?
And there you go,
I've got a working network with a Cisco ASA.
I'll save the config,
and two Cisco routers acting as devices,
on the insight and outside of our topology.
That's how easy it is to go from zero
to a working and network using Cisco ASAs,
and Cisco routers in Cisco VIRL.
I made a few mistakes that made this process a bit longer,
but as you can see it's a very simple process
to get a network up and running,
using Cisco VIRL, and Cisco ASAs.
Now if you enjoyed this video please consider subscribing
to my youtube channel, please like this video,
and please click on the bell
to get notifications when I post a new video.
I'm David Bombal, and I wanna wish you all the very best.
(upbeat music)
♪ Let's go ♪