Cisco Nexus 7000 VRF and OSPF Configuration inside Titanium N7K Emulator

This exercise has been completed on Nexus 7K titanium emulator. I am running two N7K titanium machines inside vmware workstation and have connected 7 network adapters to emulate the physical interfaces in N7K, i am using titanium emulator version 5.2.1, if you are curious to know about the N7K titanium emulator and how to install inside vmware workstation, i will be writing more stuffs on it, soon.

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I have connected my network adapters as follows on both machines, we can check which physical Ethernet interface on N7K machine is connected to network interface card on vmware workstation by simply disconnecting and watching ” show interface brief” on N7K console  which interface is going down.

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Right now my Ethernet2/1 on both N7K is connected to Vmnet4 on both vmware machines.We need to confirm and recheck else our virtual machines will not talk to each other, they should be on the same Vmnet. Lets start with our configuration.

Step 1:- Lets change the hostname of the device and assign N7K-1 to one machine and assign N7K-2 to other machine, by our old IOS familiar command “hostname N7K-1″.

N7K# conf t
Enter configuration commands, one per line.  End with CNTL/Z.
N7K(config)# hostname N7K-1  –>Same for other machine  as N7K-2.

Step-2:- Assign ip address of N7K-1 Ethernet2/1 as 12.12.12.1/24 and unshut the interface, also assign ip address of N7K-2 Ethernet2/1 as 12.12.12.2/24 and unshut the interface.Verify connectivity by pinging across the interfaces.

N7K-1(config)# ping 12.12.12.2
PING 12.12.12.2 (12.12.12.2): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 12.12.12.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=254 time=1.747 ms
64 bytes from 12.12.12.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=254 time=1.262 ms
64 bytes from 12.12.12.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=254 time=1.423 ms
64 bytes from 12.12.12.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=254 time=1.396 ms
64 bytes from 12.12.12.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=254 time=1.58 ms

— 12.12.12.2 ping statistics —
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.00% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 1.262/1.481/1.747 ms

Step-3 Check VRF membership of all interfaces inside N7K by ” show vrf interface”, by default there should be one “management” vrf for interface “mgmt0″and all other interfaces assigned to “default” vrf. Create a Loopback0 interface on N7K-1 and N7K-2 as 10.10.10.10/32 and 20.20.20.20/32. Also Create a VRF instance OSPF-VRF and assign it to interface Eth2/1 and Loopback0. Verify vrf assignment by “sh vrf interface”

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We can also verify with “sh run vrf OSPF-VRF” to check the interface vrf assignment.

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Step 4 Configure the same on N7K-2 with the loopback0 address of 20.20.20.2/32 and vrf as OSPF-VRF and assign it to interface eth2/1 and loopback0.

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Step 5 Next we start our OSPF configuration , this Lab is completed under vrf just to show the vrf functionality along with OSPF, we can also run OSPF without vrf instance  in NXOS like we do in IOS. First we enable the “feature ospf” and configure some basic OSPF commands and assign Area 0 to interface Eth2/1 on both N7K and assign Area 1 and Area 2 to both Loopback0. And in the end we will verify our OSPF neighborship and routes received.

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Step 6 :- We will verify our configuration with various show commands. And play around with OSPF.

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We can also clear ospf process by “clear ip ospf neighbor 20.20.20.20 vrf OSPF-VRF” and by command”restart ospf 1″ . And watch hellos send and received and other ospf traffic related parameters by “sh ip ospf traffic vrf OSPF-VRF”.

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We can also configure OSPF authentication in NXOS same as IOS.

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15 Comments

  1. Can you shed some light?
    Im running GNS3 Titanium and have the Nexus 7000 connected to an ASAv. The ASAv has sub interfaces with ip to form ospf adjacency with SVI on the Nexus. On the nexus side it’s running as a trunk and i see the hello packets from the ASAv on the wire but nothing making back from the nexus.

    Feature ospf enabled
    no passive interface on the svi connected to the ASav and nothing… what am i missing? is it a gns3 thing that i wont be able to accomplish this?

  2. Hello

    I need your help, I change all the MAC address and now I get the message

    ” serial1: Another process is already the server of the \\.\pipe\com_1

    the device will be disconnected.

    I need help on this, i will appreciate your reply.

  3. i have configured 2 vms and able to access with com_1 and com_2 but unable to ping from n2k1 to n2k2 . could you please help me out to resolve the issue.

  4. I installed Nexus Titanium VM in Vmware workstation.
    I have another windows server 2008 r2 VM with Putty client.

    When i use my putty client in windows 2008 VM to connect to Nexus Titanium over serial Port i get following error:
    unable to open connection to \\.\pipe\com_1 unable to open serial port

    Can you please help.

  5. Hi guys,

    In regards to your ping problem – if you deployed these 2 VMs from the same base image, VMWare may not have changed the MAC addresses of the NICs for you. It normally gives you an option on boot asking whether you Copied or Moved the VM. If you select Copied, it should change all the MACs for you. If you select “Moved”, it will leave them as the same.

    From your Nexus devices, run a “Show interface eth2/1” and check that they both do not have the same Mac. If they do, you can manually change these via the VM Settings. It will be under the “Advanced” button of the Network Adapter. Alternatively you can edit the .vmx file directly.

    Hope this helps!

  6. Hi, I have the same problem. I used VMware work station to configure two instance of N7K starting from the same unzipped files copied to two different directories. Using CDP they see the each other but I can’t ping in any way in any vrf. Could be a problem of duplicated MAC address?
    Thanks for any help

    • OK, I fixed it. It was a duplicated MAC addresses problem. I modified them in the VMnetx and it works, except than vrf management. Any idea?

  7. can I use the same titanium 5.2 vmdk files for running 2 routers how to clone it. What I have done it is i made 2 folders and access using vm players so 2 vmplayers running the same vmdk files in 2 folder in order to create 2 routers. Let me install work station and see the same issue persists.

  8. Let me thank you for the help, but it didnt answer my query. How can I make two nexus ping each other say n7k1 and n7k2 to communicate each other. Could you please guide me to solve this issue using virtual adapters, in your diagaram mentioned on top the first one i am not able to follow.

  9. I have titanium vm files so i am using vm player to run so i started 2 vm player instance in order to run 2 routers it came up but both are having same management ip address. I cant communcate between 2 routers how to solve this. I need to ping between 2 routers. Can you guide me.

    • I will suggest you to use Vmware workstation instead of Vmplayer , in addition you also need putty to connect to the serial console. Below are the steps.
      Configuring VMWARE Virtual Machine :-
      Follow these steps to add a serial port to your VMWare Workstation virtual machine:
      Attach the serial port to your VM. Open your VM settings dialog and click Add
      Select Serial Port and click Next
      Select Output to named pipe and in the box write “\\.\pipe\com_1” without quotes and click Next
      Now you need to specify configuration for the named pipe. Make sure you select “This end is the server” and “The other end in an application” otherwise you won’t get any output from your console. Click Finish.
      NOTE: The named pipe is created and deleted each time you power on, and power off your VM.

      Configuring PuTTY Connection
      When you launch PuTTY, you need to select Serial connection type, and then enter in the pipe name into the Serial Line text box:\\.\pipe\com_1
      Once you connect, you’ll be able to configure your VM (be it Vyatta, or some other flavour) all via the VM’s serial interface.
      Google internet you will find ways for sure. Let me know if this solves your query.

  10. it is not communicating, i cant ping the two vm is comming up with titianium but i cant ping each other. Can you guide me how to connect two e2/1 of 2 titianium together

    • can you tell me how to connect the titanium to gns3..i am not able to console access the device. getting connection error in gns3..can you suggest.

  11. Can you guide me how to interconnect 2 titianium running on two vm. I have 2 vm running on vmpalyer but it is not communicating each other can you guide me

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