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- In this video, before we go into the details
of how to create a GNS3 virtual topology
of routers and EtherSwitches.
We need to preface that, by first,
going over just some real basic GNS3 terminology.
As you can see from the title of this,
we're gonna talk about the differences between
projects, topologies, and nodes.
This'll be a real short video,
but these things are critical for you to understand.
So, let's start by just opening up GNS3
by double clicking on the icon here.
And you'll see that the very first thing it asks us to do,
is to either create the name of a brand new project
that we're gonna start out with,
or open an existing project.
So that leads us to the question of,
what exactly is a project?
Okay, so to answer that, I've actually-
I'm going go to ahead and cancel out of here,
and cancel out of here.
And I've all ready created a GNS3 project,
actually I'll go ahead and show you
what that looks like within GNS3.
So from here, I'm just gonna go on Open a Project,
and these are various project folders that are here.
I'll tell you what those are in just a second,
but let me just go ahead and click on this EIGRP Project.
So when you're opening an existing project,
you'll go into where your projects are stored,
and notice, at least in this version of GNS3,
projects, by default, are stored-
Let me go back.
Under your C drive,
under Users,
under the name of you, your user name,
and then you'll see there's a GNS3 folder,
and if you double click on that,
you'll see a Projects folder.
Double click on Projects,
and that is where all of your projects are stored.
So, as you go about using GNS3
to create your own labs for BGP, OSPF, whatever it is,
and you name those labs whatever you want to name it,
BGP, Santa Claus, Red Racing Car,
whatever the name of your project is,
it'll be stored here, in your Projects folder.
Once again, notice that it's your C drive,
Users, your user name in your laptop,
GNS3, and Projects.
So, let me go ahead and open up one of my existing projects.
I'll click on the name of the project,
and then I'll go to the actual GNS3 project file,
and I'm gonna talk about that in just a second.
So when I open that project file, it opens this.
A real simple project that I created just this morning
of three routers and an EtherSwitch,
some basic stuff.
Now, how did that project file create all of this?
In other words, what's in that project file
that remembered all of this when I created it?
So let me go ahead and minimize this for a second,
and bring up that project file.
So here it is.
I'll go ahead and double click on that.
And you'll see that right in the very high level
you've got three things.
You've got a screen shot, which, you can open that up.
It's just a PNG image.
And that shows, it actually took,
right after I saved the project it took a screen shot
of what the topology currently was.
And this is nice, you can send this
as an e-mail attachment to somebody
if you want to show them what you've created.
It's just a PNG image.
And then you've got your project files,
and if I double click on that,
it goes into Dynamips,
and this is all the stuff that Dynamips is using,
and we don't have to go into a lot of detail
of what all this stuff is,
but you'll also see in here,
there are some config files.
And so, when you issue a write memory,
or a copy run start command on your router-
So I'm saying here, that you've created a project,
and you've been working with it for an hour or so,
and you're ready to leave it behind,
you have to go off and do something else,
but you might want to come back to this in the future.
So on every single router and device you've got in there,
you do copy run start or write mem.
Well what that does, is in this folder here,
it creates what's called a Startup Config file.
And you can actually open those up with a text editor,
I'm gonna use NotePad+.
And you can see here,
I'll just make this a little bit bigger,
this is the last known state of your saved configuration.
So that the next time you open this project
within GNS3, it'll go right back to the state where it was.
So that's where all those config files are.
And once again, that was located
under your projects files here.
So, I went to my users, GNS3 Projects,
I double clicked on the actual name of the project,
and under Project Files
is where all those configurations were.
So these are your configuration files,
all located in here.
That's where your config files are located, right there.
So what is this thing called a Project File?
Well, you can also open that up,
notice it's a GNS3 Project File,
but you can right click on it,
open it up with a text editor,
once again, Notepad or Notepad+.
And I'm not gonna go through this in a lot of depth,
but basically, what this file is,
is this file gives GNS3 everything it needs to know about,
"Okay, when I build this thing,
where are the routers located?"
For example, when I show the user a square,
a working area, is the router gonna be in the upper left,
in the lower left?
Is it gonna be in the right or somewhere in the middle?
So that's one of the things this file does,
is it displays those router icons
in the same locations as where you dragged and dropped them
when you saved the project file,
so they're not just all willy-nilly.
It also, in here, saves, you know, how were they connected.
Was router A connected to router B
via a FastEthernet?
Or via serial interface?
If it was FastEthernet, which FastEthernet?
Was it FastEthernet 00, 0/1?
So all of that is stored in here as well.
It also stores information, like,
what was the name of the device?
You know, if you change the name default name
from Router 1 or San Francisco, or to Fuzzy,
or Bob or something,
all of that is saved in here,
so that when you open it up,
those changes are also in effect.
Other things like, you know,
when you created the project,
what kind of a router was it?
Was it is a 3640?
A 3725?
Something else?
Also, what IOS image was used?
It stores the actual full IOS image
that you used when you created the project.
So this GNS3 project file,
pretty much the only thing it doesn't have
are the configs, the start up config.
But everything else is stored in here,
so that GNS3 can recreate your project
once you pull it up.
So as I just scroll through here a little bit,
you can see it's got, you know,
your X and Y coordinates for this particular router,
so it will place it on the screen
exactly where it needs to go.
It talks about a description about a link,
what it's connected to.
If I scroll down a little bit more,
so you see, each one of these is describing a device,
node_id 2, well I don't know what that is,
but GNS3 knows what that is.
That's one particular router or switch in there.
And if I go further on down,
so this is all just describing where things show up
in the picture, and how they're all connected.
So you notice how, right here, gets all the adapters,
their names, how GNS3 recognizes them.
If I go down a little bit further,
gives my idlepc value that was assigned.
It also gives the name of the router,
if I changed it from the default name to something else.
The platform, and it even goes down here
a little bit further,
and, yeah, right here, the image.
It shows the image that was created.
So this is your GNS3 project file,
so when you are saving a project,
just to recap, what exactly are you doing
when you save a project?
Well, whatever the name of that project is,
it creates a folder with that name,
as you can see here.
And within that folder, it creates a screenshot,
so it can display that screenshot for you again.
It creates a projects file,
which has all of your config files in it,
as well as also the state of memory,
like you know, what was the state of the routing table,
what was the state of the ARP table,
and all that good stuff.
And then lastly, it has a projects file,
and we talked about what that is.
So I'm not quite done yet,
but hopefully at this point,
you understand the difference between a config file
and a project file from the standpoint of GNS3.
Right? The project file is everything but the configs.
The project file is how GNS pieces everything together.
The config file, like we talked about,
is, just like it sounds,
it's the last state of your configs
when you did a write memory.
Now, keep this in mind,
if you close your GNS3 project,
if you're done, and you walk away from it,
and you close it all up.
Anything that was not saved is gone.
It's just like a real router. Right?
In a real Cisco IOS router,
if you power that router off,
anything that was in your running configuration
that was not saved to your start up configuration is lost.
Same thing here with GNS3.
It does not save a copy of what
your last running configuration was.
It only saves what your last start up configuration was.
So make sure you save your configs with write mem
or copy run start before you turn off all your routers,
and shut down the GNS3 application.
One other thing I wanted to talk about,
just one other term.
So in GNS3 terminology,
if you take a look at this window here, off to the left.
This is a tool bar here,
that shows you all of the nodes that are available.
So, for example, if I click on this one here,
this shows me all of the router nodes that are available.
This shows me my switching nodes that are available,
or my PC nodes, or a Cloud node.
So pretty much, anything that you can drag and drop
into this working area right here,
is what GNS3 considers to be a node,
whether it be a router, a switch, a PC, a firewall,
they're all considered nodes from GNS3's standpoint.
So as far as basic terminology is concerned,
that concludes this particular video,
and the next set of videos will take a better look
at this user interface,
and see what the various tool bars are,
and how we can start building some basic topologies.
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