Cisco 8000 Hardware Emulator Datasheet

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Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

Contents

Product Overview. 3

Benefits. 3

Emulated Platforms. 3

8000 Emulator Architecture. 3

Deploying the Emulator 4

Runtime Requirements. 5

Limitations. 5

 


 

Product Overview

The Cisco 8000 Hardware Emulator portfolio (here after referred to as 8000e) provides one for one equivalent simulation of the 8xxx Series routers. Unlike other Virtualized Network Operating System solutions, 8000e provides both accurate hardware chassis and forwarding engine emulation. This enables 8000e to run the same production IOS-XR images as hardware. Secondly, it can run third party Operating Systems such as SONIC which have been ported to the 8000 series routers.

Benefits

Key benefit for customers:

     Early access to virtual hardware for testing and integration

     Integration with network emulation environments

     Integration into CI/CD development pipelines

     Evaluation of next generation IOS-XR7

Emulated Platforms

Currently Supported Platforms:

Hardware Emulator

Port Configuration

OS support

8201

20x400GE +

12x100GE

IOS-XR 7.x

SONIC

8201-32FH

32x400GE

IOS-XR 7.x

8202

12x400GE + 60x100GE

IOS-XR 7.x

8101-32H

32x100GE

IOS-XR 7.x

8102-64H

64x100GE

IOS-XR 7.x

 

Note 1: Additional emulated platforms will be released coinciding with the introduction of new 8000 routing hardware.

8000 Emulator Architecture

The 8000e product line leverages type 2 hardware accelerated hypervisor technology and benefits from running on the host operating system. Being a hardware emulator, the 8000e is a distinct software product and is independent of the operating system it runs.

 

IOS-XR | SONIC

Enhanced-KVM Hypervisor | Device Models | Forwarding Engine

Operating System (Ubuntu/Redhat/CentOS)

Host hardware

 

While single board/CPU platforms can be represented with an instance of the hypervisor, modular chassis such as the 8808 require multiple instances. For this reason, the computational requirement for a populated modular chassis grows with the number route processors, Line cards, and Fabric cards simulated in the system.

Deploying the Emulator

The software package comes with complete toolset required to create and run topologies of emulated routers. Using our solution, user can launch flavors of the 8000 emulator, other virtual routers, traffic generators, and interconnect them. The topology is specified in a YAML notation. The toolset includes a python library to manage the simulation lifecycle.

Users can also deploy an instance of the emulated router within their own framework. To deploy as a component, the 8000 instance is wrapped in a docker container. It can also be wrapped in a single VM.

Deployment options are:

 

Deployment

Base System

OS

What is provided

Note

Server installation

Linux

16+ cores

64G+ Mem

Ubuntu22

CentOS/RH8

 

Linux packages + install scripts

 

Docker env

16+ cores

64G+ Mem

Ubuntu22

CentOS/RH8

Docker file to create environment

 

AWS

Bare metal

instance

Ubuntu22

Automation scripts to create AMI images

 

Azure

16+ cores

64G+ Mem

Ubuntu22

 

Linux packages + install scripts

Requires nested VM

Google

Cloud

16+ cores

64G+ Mem

Ubuntu22

Linux packages + install scripts

Requires nested VM.

 

ESXI

16+ cores

64G+ Mem

Ubuntu22

Linux packages + install scripts

Requires nested VM

Windows*

Hyper-V

8+ cores

16G+ Mem

Windows

Ubuntu VM

Linux packages + install scripts

Requires nested VM

 

Windows*

VMware

8+ cores

16G+ Mem

Windows10

Ubuntu VM

Linux packages + install scripts

Requires nested VM

Apple*

Fusion

8+ cores

16G+ Mem

MacOS

Ubuntu VM

Linux packages + install scripts

 

 

Note 1: Resource requirements for the last three rows cover ability to run single instances in nested virtualization mode.

Note 2: Integration with CML2 and GNS3 are forthcoming.

Runtime Requirements

 

Emulator

Operating

System

CPU

Memory

Min Memory

Disk

Comment

8201

IOS-XR7

4

32G

12G

30G+

 

8802

IOS-XR7

4

32G

12G

30G/board

 

8804/8808

IOS-XR7

8*

(RP+LC)

64G*

(2x32)

40G*

(2x20)

30G+

Per board in system

8201

SONIC

2

8-12

8

30G+

 

Limitations

While 8000 emulator attempts to match actual hardware router, there are limitations:

Feature

Emulator limitation

Traffic shaping and rate limiting

Functionality is limited and does not match hardware.

Data Throughput

Emulator throughput is in the thousands of packets a second and cannot be used to handle production traffic.

Counters

Some hardware counters are not supported in the emulator.

 

 

 

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