Deploying Cisco VIRL on VMware Workstation – Caveats

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

• 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

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.