This allows me to reach any device inside UNetLab that has an interface connected to the cloud icon and configured with an address inside my LAN.

UNetLab can be seen as a hypervisor for images that are usually run on physical networking equipment or inside separate virtual machines.

I wanted to incorporate setting up UNetLab in another article but decided to award the setup process with its own post.

UNetLab is an increasingly popular alternative to GNS3 (Graphical Network Simulator) that provides comparable functionality, or for something like Cisco Packet Tracer (which simulates instead of emulates, and supports only Cisco devices).

Unified Networking Lab Free VMware Player

UNetLab works as a virtual machine on top of any hypervisor by VMware (including the free VMware Player).

You just run and configure the VM, upload the NOS image you want to use and connect to the web interface to start building your lab.

You can also run UNetLab on an ESXi server if you have one available, which is actually the preferred method if you want to build bigger labs.

I have 16 GB in my desktop so I will be providing 8 GB to my VM.

The first step is to grab VMware Player from the VMware website here and install it.

At the moment of writing this, the version available for downloading is Unified Networking Lab-1.0.0-8.ova but we will be updating this later on to a more recent version.

After the import, right-click your new VM and select Settings.

Make sure to select Processor and check the option thats called Virtualize Intel VT-xEPT or AMD-VRVI.

After providing the settings, the VM will reboot and provide a shell again.

Unified Networking Lab Password And Test

The UNetLab VM does not support the ifconfig command anymore so you can use ip a.

The adapter pnet0 should have picked up an IP address from your DHCP server if everything went right.

Test your connection to internet and your DNS server by pinging a web server via a domain name.

If you use the command dpkg -l unetlab it will output some crap and the UNetLab version consistent with the filename of the OVA we downloaded.

Assuming you are in the home directory of the root user (root), run the following command.

Note that your VM has an SSH server so you can connect to it using SSH and copy the commands.

Use this output to form the following commands customized for your VM, then run them.

Its visualized as a cloud icon in your lab topology and connects your lab to a separate virtual NIC.