I recently tried to deploy Cisco VIRL on VMWare Workstation 10 - the install instructions ↗ are for v8 - there are a few differences I noted.

  • It doesn’t account for the host-only network installed by default so increment all vmnets by 1

VMNet configuration VMware Workstation 10

  • The labelling for VT-x/EPT has changed, it now lives under Settings -> Hardware -> Processors -> Virtualisation engine -> Preferred mode:
  • You need to explicitly select Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI mode

Expose VT-x/EPT to VM in Workstation

After this entering the sudo kvm-ok command in the VIRL CLI still output KVM acceleration can NOT be used.

I needed to edit the .vmx file directly and add/change these lines:

monitor.virtual_mmu = "hardware"
monitor.virtual_exec = "hardware"
vhv.enable = "TRUE"
monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = "true"

After that booting into VIRL and running sudo kvm-ok output KVM acceleration can be used.

Once this was overcome configuration went quite smoothly and was fairly simple to setup, be sure to follow the tutorials ↗ once you are ready to go.

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