Appendix

Lab Infrastructure build

Each of the Lab server runs 12 instances of vJunos-Switch (or the old disaggregated vEX9214 based on the EOL vMX-bundle*.tgz) and other VMs emulating desktop clients, vSRX as WAN-Router, DHCP-Server and so on. The design is based on the internal development called “Lab-Builder” which is described in chapter 12.6 of the Campus Fabric Reference Architecture .

A screenshot of a web builder Description automatically generated

If you have a small Lab server then you can build such Labs at your home or in a Juniper office. The minimal requirements are:

  • 16vCPUs . Yes, we oversubscribe a bit :-)

  • Ubuntu 20.04.x (higher kernel versions do not allow building an UKSM kernel) but are supported.

  • UKSM-kernel to bring down the Memory requirements of the running VMs (how to build is explained in chapter 12.6.1 of the Campus Fabric Ref. Arch.)

  • 64 GB RAM with special UKSM-kernel (32 GB would work when you only deploy one of the two topologies at a time)

  • 96 GB RAM with a normal kernel (64GB would work when you only deploy one of the two topologies at a time)

  • >= 500 GB SSD

Good experiences were made in the past with the small (and ideal for travel) Intel/Asus NUC-Series as well as the minisforum NAB*-Series. Those systems can be bought as bare-bone with all the needed parts for around 700 to 800.-USD .