vMX Dual RE – EVE-NG

So I wanted to mess around with GRES and NSR as part of my JNCIS-SP studies, as it’s part of the exam objectives and it’s also something we use at work. The problem I found was the vMX versions below 15.x is one RE and one FPC, so can’t do dual RE setup on EVE-NG.

Later versions of vMX like 16.x and above the RE and FPC is separate, so can do dual RE topology and test GRES/NSR.

I followed the usual guide on EVE-NG to setup vMX version 18.x but the guide doesn’t say how to setup dual RE:

https://www.eve-ng.net/index.php/documentation/howtos/howto-add-juniper-vmx-16-x-17-x/

After a bit of digging around I managed to suss it out, below are the steps on how to get dual RE working with one FPC. However, there is one caveat based on the testing I’ve done. The FPC metadata images don’t seem to work on EVE-NG, vMX will recognise FPC0,1,2 etc but when you connect to other nodes in EVE-NG there is no network connectivity at all.

Follow the steps mentioned on the EVE-NG guide, but create the VCP using the metadata images for RE0 and RE1:

mkdir /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/vmxvcp-18.2R1.9-VCP-re0
cp junos-vmx-x86-64-18.2R1.9.qcow2 /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/vmxvcp-18.2R1.9-VCP-re0/virtioa.qcow2
cp vmxhdd.img /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/vmxvcp-18.2R1.9-VCP-re0/virtiob.qcow2
cp metadata-usb-re0.img /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/vmxvcp-18.2R1.9-VCP-re0/virtioc.qcow2

mkdir /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/vmxvcp-18.2R1.9-VCP-re1
cp junos-vmx-x86-64-18.2R1.9.qcow2 /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/vmxvcp-18.2R1.9-VCP-re1/virtioa.qcow2
cp vmxhdd.img /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/vmxvcp-18.2R1.9-VCP-re1/virtiob.qcow2
cp metadata-usb-re1.img /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/vmxvcp-18.2R1.9-VCP-re1/virtioc.qcow2

For the vFPC, import the image without any metadata images.

mkdir /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/vmxvfp-18.2R1.9-VFP
cp vFPC-20180605.img /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/vmxvfp-18.2R1.9-VFP/virtioa.qcow2

Finally, fix permissions:

/opt/unetlab/wrappers/unl_wrapper -a fixpermissions

Start EVE-NG, add RE0, RE1 and FPC, connect them all up using a network bridge using interface em1.

It takes a while for everything to boot up and come online, but once it does you should see both REs online and the interfaces registered from the VFP:

That’s it! I’ve tested GRES and NSR, worked without any issues. Any problems drop a comment 😀