EVE-NG Network Emulation Lab

What

EVE-NG (Emulated Virtual Environment Next Generation) Community Edition running inside a Proxmox VM with nested virtualization enabled. It hosts multi-vendor network topologies for CCNA/CCNP study and protocol testing — without touching production gear.

Supported images currently loaded:

Cisco IOS 15.x (c7200, c3725)
Cisco IOSv (for OSPF/BGP labs)
MikroTik CHR 7.x
Cisco ASA 9.x (firewall labs)

Why

The test-it-in-the-lab-first rule at Datanet means I need to verify configs before pushing to production. EVE-NG lets me spin up a 10-router topology in minutes, make mistakes, and reload without anyone losing internet access. It’s also how I studied for CCNA.

How

Proxmox VM Config

CPU: 4 vCPUs with host CPU type (required for nested KVM)
RAM: 16 GB (the more the better — each Cisco router image uses 256–512 MB)
Disk: 100 GB thin-provisioned

# In Proxmox, enable nested virtualization on the VM
qm set <vmid> --cpu host
# Also enable in /etc/modprobe.d/kvm.conf on the Proxmox host
echo "options kvm_intel nested=1" >> /etc/modprobe.d/kvm.conf

EVE-NG Install

Installed from the official EVE-NG OVA, converted to a Proxmox template. Images are uploaded via SCP to /opt/unetlab/addons/dynamips/ (Dynamips) or /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/ (QEMU).

Sample Topology: OSPF Multi-Area

[R1]---(area 0)---[R2]---(area 1)---[R3]
 |                                    |
[R4]----------(area 0)---------------[R5]

R1 config snippet:

router ospf 1
 router-id 1.1.1.1
 area 0 authentication message-digest
 network 10.0.12.0 0.0.0.255 area 0
 network 10.0.14.0 0.0.0.255 area 0

Challenges

Nested KVM performance — Cisco IOSv is noticeably slower than bare metal. For large topologies (20+ nodes) I hit RAM limits.
Image licensing — Cisco production images require a valid SmartNet contract or DevNet access. I use only images I have legitimate access to.
Network integration — bridging EVE-NG’s internal cloud networks to the Proxmox VLAN bridges required careful OVS/bridge configuration.

Tech Used

EVE-NG Community 6.x — network emulation platform
Proxmox KVM — hypervisor with nested virt
Cisco IOSv / IOS 15.x — router images
MikroTik CHR — RouterOS in VM form
Wireshark — capture via EVE-NG’s built-in port mirroring