Cisco SD-WAN Lab Setup in EVE-NG by Arash Deljoo

Cisco SD-WAN on EVE-NG

Cisco SD-WAN is a major topic in the CCE Enterprise blueprint now. Network engineers that want to pass the lab exam should have extensive hands-on experience with the solutions. However, for people who do not have the chance to touch it at work, it is actually not easy to get access to a practice lab. In this lesson, I will show you one way to set up a fully functional Cisco SD-WAN home lab on EVE-NG that can be used to practice every topic in the exam's blueprint.

Setup EVE-NG

One thing I'd like to mention is that Cisco SD-WAN requires a lot of processing power. For a small practicing topology consisting of 1 controller of each type and 3-4 vEdges, you should give the EVE-NG VM at least 8 vCPUs and 16GB of RAM. However, if you want to make a large topology with redundant controllers and many vEdge devices, you must have a lot of computing resources at your disposal.

Certificates

Cisco SD-WAN Controllers can not be brought into operation unless their identity is validated by an established chain of trust. This identity validation process is intended to ensure that only trusted devices can join the SD-WAN solution while still retaining flexibility. Each controller must have a root certificate installed and a controller certificate installed and signed by a 

There are a number of options to build your own Cisco SD-WAN lab. I believe EVE-NG is your best option at the moment. In this lesson, I’ll show you everything you need to do to install EVE-NG and build your own Cisco SD-WAN lab. This includes:

• Downloading the required Cisco and EVE-NG images.

• Installing EVE-NG.

• Installing the images on your EVE-NG installation.

• Testing whether you can use the images.