In this video I'm gonna show you how to install GNS3 version 2.2 on a Windows computer. In this example I've got a Windows laptop. It's a brand new laptop running Windows 10. GNS3 hasn't been installed previously on this laptop.
I'm controlling the laptop via VNC from my Mac. It just makes it easier to do recordings. One of the important things that you need to understand with regards to GNS3 is GNS3 has a client. and a server component. Now, an important thing to understand about GNS3 is GNS3 consists of two main components.
We have a Windows client, and then we have the GNS3 VM. The Windows client is a Windows executable which you run locally on your Windows operating system. But you also have a virtual machine.
This is an Ubuntu VM that you run in either a hypervisor such as VirtualBox or VMware Workstation Pro or VMware Workstation Player or Hyper-V. So again, you have a Windows component and you have a virtual machine. At the moment, we use the GNS3 GUI application, so the Windows application to control the virtual machine. And you build your topologies using this Windows executable. GNS3 are working on a thin client, which is basically a web browser client.
In this release, however, it's kind of limited. You can't do much with it, so I'm gonna show you mainly how to use the GNS3 GUI application, in other words, the executable to control the GNS3 VM. In this video, I'm gonna show you how to download that executable, how to build a basic topology within GNS3. In subsequent videos, I'll show you how to use the GNS3 VM and run Cisco IOS images and other images on the GNS3 VM.
You have an important decision to make. Once you've got your GUI up and running, you need to decide which hypervisor you're going to use. Are you gonna use VirtualBox?
Now, there are lots of restrictions with VirtualBox. Are you gonna use VMware Workstation Pro or VMware Workstation Player? Or are you gonna use ESXi?
So run this on a full VMware server. So in subsequent videos, I'll show you how to do installations using those hypervisors such as Hyper-V and so forth. In this video, let me show you how to use the GNS3 GUI application and get a basic network working.
Okay, so let's get started. The first thing you need to do is go to the GNS3 website. So you go to gns3.com, click free download.
GNS3 is free software available under the GNU General Public License. You either need to sign up for an account or click login and login with your credentials. So now that I've logged in, I'm asked, do I wanna download the GNS3 GUI for Windows, Mac, or Linux? I'm gonna download the GUI for Windows, and as you can see, the executable is downloaded. I'll close this window and click Download again.
Notice we're told that for optimal performance, we can also download the GNS3 VM. Now, as I've mentioned, I'll cover this in a separate video. You can download the GNS3 VM for VirtualBox, for VMware Workstation Pro, VMware Workstation Player, VMware Fusion if you've got a Mac or ESXi.
Now, they haven't updated their website yet, but if you go to Google and search for GNS3 GitHub, This link, releases GNS3, GNS3 GUI, shows us that the latest release of GNS3 is version 2.2, released eight days ago at the time of this recording. What I want to point out here, and I'll just zoom in, is they have a GNS3 VM for Hyper-V, as well as KVM VirtualBox ESXi and VMware Workstation. So if you want to use the GNS3 VM with Hyper-V, You can use this link.
I'll put this link and other links below this video so you don't have to try and find the documentation and links yourself. Okay, but for the moment, I've downloaded the GNS3 GUI. So I'll open that up.
So here's the download. I'm gonna simply double click on that. Click install anyway. I'm gonna click yes to allow this app to make changes to my device. The GNS3 setup wizard displays.
For most of this video, I'm just gonna take the defaults to keep things simple and get us started. So I'm gonna click next. GNS3 is licensed under the GNU General Public License. In other words, the software is free, but you do need to agree to that license, so I'm gonna click agree. You need to choose a startup folder.
I'm gonna go with the default and click next. Now, GNS3 consists of the core GNS3 application, but it also contains other applications such as WinPCAP, Wireshark, Dynamips, QMU, VPCS, and others. You can decide whether you wanna install all of these applications or not. So as an example, you may decide that you don't wanna use Solarpadi, and you could uncheck that.
What I recommend that you do if you're new to GNS3 is just stay with the defaults. So that's what I'm gonna do here. I'm gonna simply click Next.
I'm gonna go with the default installation directory and click Install. GNS3 will now install various software components. One of those is WinPCAP, so I'm gonna click Next, click Agree, click Install, click Finish. Notice GNS3 is now downloading Wireshark from the internet.
So if you are using mobile data, just be aware that Wireshark is gonna be downloaded if you selected that as one of the options. So GNS3 is actually connecting to the internet, downloading Wireshark and then installing it silently. Notice the S here.
So silent installation of Wireshark. So if you're paying for data, rather than having unlimited data, Just be aware that the initial GNS3 application doesn't include Wireshark. That's gonna be downloaded separately. Once Wireshark is installed, the GNS3 installation continues. And as an example, Solar Putty is downloaded and then installed.
If you wanna use Solar Putty, you need to agree to the end user license agreement and click Accept. You then need to put in your email address. So put in your email address and click.
Continue, and as you can see here, the GNS3 installation has completed. I'm gonna click Next, and now you have a choice. You can download the SolarWinds standard toolset.
Now you don't have to install this, it's optional. You could also use the link below this video if you wanna download that. I'm gonna say no here, click Next.
The checkbox Start GNS3 is selected. I'm gonna keep that and click Finish to start GNS3. A GNS3 thank you page is displayed, I'm gonna close that.
And what you'll notice now is GNS3 has started up and a setup wizard is displayed. I'm gonna click cancel on that setup wizard. This is important and this is what you wanna see.
Notice under service summary, it says laptop with the name CPU this RAM this. In other words, GNS3 has started successfully. Now if you have problems, First thing I recommend that you do is close GNS3 down. I've often had to shut down GNS3 and then start it up again after the initial installation to get it working.
Again, when GNS3 starts, just wait. Notice service summary is blank at the moment. I wanna get to the point where I see this service summary and I wanna see it as green.
If you don't see that, restart GNS3. Restart your laptop, so reboot the entire computer. If that also doesn't work, then look at your firewall and your antivirus. Typically antivirus and typically firewalls stop the GNS3 server process from running. So make sure that you permit the GNS3 executable, the GNS3 server in your antivirus.
So notice here I can see GNS3 is running. Make sure if necessary that you permit that through your firewall. permit that in your antivirus. Okay, so just to do that process again, when I shut down GNS3 and start it up again, I'm told that I need to create a project.
Notice it's still starting up, connecting to local server. Just wait for that process to start. Make sure that you see this. And now I can create a new project. So my first GNS3 project.
Click OK. Now what I suggest you do initially is set up a very basic topology. So I'm gonna drag a switch into the topology. I'm also gonna drag two VPCS devices into the topology.
Start with something very basic and make sure that it works. I'm gonna click on Add a Link. I'm gonna add a link from the PC to the switch like that.
I'm gonna show interface labels like that. Now, GNS3 has a lot of functionality. One of the things that you can do is right click and then change the symbol.
If you don't like the built-in symbols, then change them. So as an example, I'm gonna go for circle blue. So affinity circle blue and search for client and I'm gonna change that symbol to a blue client. Right click on this one.
Change symbol, circle blue, client, change that icon. On this switch, I'll change the symbol as well. I'm gonna go for square blue in this case.
And select switch, click OK. And I've got a switch in my topology. Now if you wanna make it look good, click snap to grid.
So go to view, snap to grid. and show the grid, and then you can get these devices to snap to a grid so that it looks better. Move it around as you like, zoom in if you want to, and then what I'll do now is remove the grid so that my topology looks good, something like that.
And then what I'll do is click Start. to start up the topology, and then I'm gonna open up a console to the devices. Now in this example, I installed Solar Putty. So Solar Putty has started up.
I had an issue where the PCs weren't displayed, so I restarted Solar Putty so that I could see both PCs. But what you'll notice is the font is really small. So I'm gonna click on the menu, go to settings, go to general, and at the bottom here we've got this option, fonts and colors. And I'm gonna launch putty.
You have to make these changes within putty. I'm gonna go to appearance, and I'm gonna change the appearance to bold, and let's say 18 to make it very big. I'm gonna click okay. Go to session, click default settings, click save, click cancel, close Solar Putty down, open it up again by clicking on the console option and what you'll notice now is my fonts are a lot bigger. If that's still not big enough, then again just go into the menu, setting, general, launch putty, appearance.
Change, let's set this to 20, click OK, session, click default settings, click save, click cancel, close Solar Putty down, open it up again, and that's how you change the fonts in Solar Putty. I'll make this a bit smaller, so there we go. Now in my topology, I've got two PCs, PC1 and PC2. So what I'll do is do a quick test, set the IP address of PC1 to 10.1.1.1 with a slash 24 mask, PC2 IP address Once you've done that, if everything is working properly, you should be able to ping from one PC to the other, and I can.
PC1 can ping PC2, and PC2 can ping. So again, PC1 can ping PC2, and PC2 can ping PC1. I've successfully downloaded and installed the GNS3 GUI.
I've successfully built a basic network. I've changed some settings in Solar Putty. The last thing I need to do is save my configuration.
GNS3 doesn't automatically save the configurations of devices like, for instance, Packet Tracer does. you have to manually save your device configurations. Now I don't need to save the configurations of this built-in switch in GNS3, but I do need to save the configurations of my VPCS devices. So what I can do now is shut GNS3 down.
So it'll turn off the devices and it'll close GNS3 down. I'll close Solar Putty down, and then to prove that everything is working, I'll start up GNS3 once again. Wait for your servers to start.
So wait for GNS3 to start up the servers. I can click on recent projects now. Here's my first GNS3 project, click on that. That'll open up my project. I'll click start, click connect to console, and hopefully now I should have my topology back, which I do.
So PC1, can it ping PC2? Yes it can. Can PC2 ping PC1?
Yes it can. So that's how you Download and install the GNS3 GUI. The next step is you need to integrate the GNS3 GUI with the GNS3 VM, but that means you have to make a decision. Are you gonna use VMware Workstation Pro, VMware Workstation Player, VirtualBox, Hyper-V, ESXi? What are you going to use for your hypervisor software to run the GNS3 VM?
Now once you've made that decision, have a look at the list of videos that I've linked below or in this playlist. Decide which method you're going to use and then select the relevant video for the hypervisor that you're going to use. Now if you don't mind, please would you subscribe to my YouTube channel?
Please would you like this video and please click on the bell to get notifications. I'm David Bombal and I wanna wish you all the very best. Get down.