welcome to solarwinds ncm on gns3 (1)

2007-2014 GNS3 Technologies Inc. Solarwinds and GNS3 are registered trademarks. All rights reserved.

Solarwinds and GNS3

Solarwinds NCM

Edited by the GNS3 Assist Team


Solarwinds and GNS3

Solarwinds NCM

Welcome to the Solarwinds Graphical Network Simulator tutorial!

I hope to make it easy enough for GNS3 beginners while at the same time opening doors for our advanced members.

If you have been around the networking world for any amount of time, you have probably heard of Solarwinds. They have a large suite of network management software. We are going to take a look at one of their more powerful tools in my opinion Orion NCM, and run it over our GNS3 topology.

This How-to is more about the interoperability between GNS3 and NCM so I am assuming you have your GNS3 up and running and NCM up and running. From there, we will walk through connecting the two together and then showing off NCM a little bit. However, if you havent downloaded the Solarwinds NCM, you can download it here: Solarwinds NCM

Before we begin, let me outline how this document is structured:

Section 1: Prerequisites

The prerequisites for running the NCM in GNS3 are the following:

1. Configure the Network adapter in your Virtual Machine.

2. Create a loopback adapter.

3. Configure a cloud connection within GNS3.

4. Logically connect your router to the cloud connection

5. Configuring the router with a basic ip address and snmp strings

Once those prerequisites are completed, you can then go to section 2:

6. Start up the NCM and configure the interfaces to monitor.


Solarwinds and GNS3Section 1, subsection 1: Configure the Network adapter in your Virtual Machine

This example shows a VMware player running Windows Server 2003 SP2 with a blank SolarWinds NCM. I also have my GNS3 workspace up and running but completely blank.

Here are some notes if you are going to try this out in a virtual environment.

If you are running this on a physical machine, you would simply need your computer running GNS3 and the machine with NCM plugged into a switch on the same VLAN.

However, this is a tutorial on how to get this to run in GNS3, so the rest of the document is laid out to accomplish this.

Set the VMs NIC to NAT. For some reason, because the VM is running on the same machine as GNS3, having the NIC bridged would not allow SNMP to transit between the two. I could ping all day (and boy could I) but no SNMP or login info would transit. Once I clicked over to NAT SNMP/login worked fine. If my NCM was running on a separate physical computer, Bridging would work fine. Understanding what setting works in Virtualbox is a critical step. Having said all that, use NAT for the rest of this tutorial.


Solarwinds and GNS3

Being familiar with your Virtualbox and where to change the settings for the network adapter is a required skill.

Subsection 2: Create a loopback adapter.

Lets create a Loopback adapter for connecting GNS3 to the rest of my network.

If you are familiar with creating loopbacks in Windows prior to 8.1, skip this section. For those of you who are not familiar, or those who use Windows 8.1, I recommend a separate document, How to create a Loopback Interface to work with GNS3 on Windows 8.1.

Follow the screenshots for the Loopback adapter in Older Windows:


Solarwinds and GNS3Right click Computer

Click on Manage

Click on Device Manager

Right click your PCs name

Click add legacy devices

Click next


Solarwinds and GNS3

Install manually from list radial button

Next


Solarwinds and GNS3

Select network adapters


Solarwinds and GNS3

Select Microsoft. Then Microsoft Loopback Adapter


Solarwinds and GNS3Click next until you are finished

Rename the adapter so you can identify it easily


Solarwinds and GNS3Now lets Bridge your physical connection with our newly created Loopback adapter. (Click on one then hold Ctrl and click the other, then right click on either and select Bridge Connections) You should see a small virtual device icon pop up and your network adapters identify their new connections shortly.

Restart your computer now (this is so GNS3 will detect the Loopback).

Something worth noting that I discovered a while back: if you ever move the cloud once built, there is a chance you will not regain network connectivity to your physical network. You will either need to restart your computer or you can try a couple different things. Try each, one at a time and if you still cant ping try the next one.

Delete your windows arp cache from cmd.exe netsh interface ip delete arpcache

Delete the cloud and delete the bridge via network connection page and then rebridge and rebuild the cloud

Delete the cloud, bridge then save and close GNS3, restart compter and GNS3 then rebuild cloud and bridge and do a manual reload on your devices.

Last resort: pull hair out and rebuild topology/cloud/MS loopback/bridge.


Solarwinds and GNS3Subsection 3: Configure a cloud connection within GNS3

Now that you have rebooted, lets build the GNS3 portion. For this example I will build just the one router needed to connect to the a cloud device and then I will expand the topology to show off NCM. Drag out any router you have a functioning IOS for and also drag out a Cloud connector. NOTE: this version of GNS3 does not have the cloud icon in the panel. You can still right click and drag the word Cloud. Once your mouse pointer crosses into the topology window, you will see a cloud icon.

Right click on the cloud and click on Configure


Solarwinds and GNS3Select Cloud 1 and under the NIO Ethernet tab, hit the down arrow, select your new loopback

Click Add and then ok at the bottom

Subsection 4: Logically connect your router to the cloud connection.

Next cable your Router to the Cloud and power the router up


Solarwinds and GNS3

Subsection 5: Configuring the router with a basic ip address and snmp strings. Now lets do some CLI work (hover over the device to get the console port info)


Solarwinds and GNS3Here is all you need to get connectivity (I will post the configs in text at the bottom) and then just to be sure; Ping your default-gateway. Mine happens to be 192.168.1.1.

All the 192.168.1.0/24 IPs seen here are simply unused IPs from my homes local subnet. You can see what you have available by going into your home WiFi router and checking the DHCP table.

Lets add the configs for the NCM portion (SNMP community strings)

Now the access info for NCM to access the device (username, password, enable password, vty)


Solarwinds and GNS3

Now we will jump on the Server and check NCM connectivity. (If you have noticed, this has all been transparent to NCM and the routers. The cloud is the key). We will not need to do anything special to NCM to start using NCM on our GNS3 topology.

Section 2: Start up the NCM and configure the interfaces to monitor.

We add each device or import as we normally would individually or with an excel doc etc. Then validate SNMP/Login information to confirm we now have full access to our GNS3 Router.


Solarwinds and GNS3

You can see the device on the main screen here


Solarwinds and GNS3So there it is, we are now able to connect Solarwinds Orion NCM to our GNS3 topology! Now the fun begins.

Lets create a decent sized topology to try out some of the tools in NCM. In the picture below, you can see that I have added a few more devices and put them all into the NCM. The switches are all Etherswitch routers so I can have them running SNMP as well, I just changed their symbols.


Solarwinds and GNS3First thing we will do is get all the good running configs. I downloaded the first routers configs as a test. Now I will download all of the configs at once by highlighting them and then right click, Download Configs.

NCM will login to the devices and pull the running config to our local computers TFTP-root file or where ever you have it set up to go on your NCM.

As you can see each device now has a config listed in the Node list.


Solarwinds and GNS3

Next for the sake of the senario, I forgot to add a login banner to all the nodes. Now I could login to each device and paste the config. Or I could use the Script application and send the config to any or all of the nodes. Click on the Script icon then highlight the nodes you would like to push the script out to. Type in the config as you would if you were in the CLI, including exit, wr etc.. and hit execute. (Double check before pushing something to your entire network ;)


Solarwinds and GNS3

Here you can see the script scrolling down as it sends and completes each node.


Solarwinds and GNS3

Just to verify that our login banner was pushed out, we will use the build in telnet app to telnet to all the nodes. Select the nodes you wish to access, then click the telnet icon (circled in orange) and as you can see, the login banner was pushed to all the nodes and we are good to go.


Solarwinds and GNS3

That concludes this tutorial on connecting GNS3 to Solarwinds Orion NCM. I hope I found the balance on this how-to and all experience levels were able to benefit.

Thanks for reading!

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Solarwinds and GNS3 ##############################GNS3AR01############################

!

conf t

host GNS3AR01

!

username gns3 password gns3

!

enable Secret gns3

!

line vty 0 4

login local

!

ip domain-name gns3.net

crypto key gen rsa

(hit enter twice)

!

snmp-server community cisco RO

snmp-server community CISCO RW

!

int fa0/0

ip add 192.168.1.114 255.255.255.0

no shut

!

int f0/1

ip add 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0

no shut

!

router ospf 1

net 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 area 0

!


Solarwinds and GNS3##############################GNS3AR02##############################

!

conf t

host GNS3AR02

!


!

enable Secret gns3

!

line vty 0 4

login local

!


crypto key gen rsa

(hit enter twice)

!



!

int fa0/0

ip add 192.168.1.120 255.255.255.0

no shut

!

int f0/1

ip add 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0

no shut

!

router ospf 1

net 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 area 0

!


Solarwinds and GNS3##############################GNS3DSW01##############################

!

conf t

host GNS3DSW01

!


!

enable Secret gns3

!

line vty 0 4

login local

!


crypto key gen rsa

(hit enter twice)

!



!

int vlan 1

ip address 192.168.1.121 255.255.255.0

!

ip default-gateway 192.168.1.114

!

int range fa1/2 , fa1/3 , fa1/6

sw mode trunk

!


Solarwinds and GNS3##############################GNS3DSW02##############################

!

conf t

host GNS3DSW02

!


!

enable Secret gns3

!

line vty 0 4

login local

!


crypto key gen rsa

(hit enter twice)

!



!

int vlan 1

ip address 192.168.1.122 255.255.255.0

!


!

int range fa1/2 , fa1/6 , fa1/15

sw mode trunk

!

##############################GNS3ASW01##############################

!

conf t

host GNS3ASW01


Solarwinds and GNS3!


!

enable Secret gns3

!

line vty 0 4

login local

!


crypto key gen rsa

(hit enter twice)

!



!

int vlan 1

ip address 192.168.1.123 255.255.255.0

!


!

int fa1/15

sw mode trunk

!

int fa1/0

sw mode

!

##############################GNS3ASW02##############################

!

conf t

host GNS3ASW02

!


Solarwinds and GNS3username gns3 password gns3

!

enable Secret gns3

!

line vty 0 4

login local

!


crypto key gen rsa

(hit enter twice)

!



!

int vlan 1

ip address 192.168.1.124 255.255.255.0

!


!

int range fa1/14 , fa1/15

sw mode trunk

!

##############################GNS3ASW03##############################

!

conf t

host GNS3ASW03

!


!

enable Secret gns3

!


Solarwinds and GNS3line vty 0 4

login local

!


crypto key gen rsa

(hit enter twice)

!



!

int vlan 1

ip address 192.168.1.125 255.255.255.0

!


!

int fa1/15

sw mode trunk

!

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welcome to solarwinds ncm on gns3 (1)

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