Jan 07, 2016  Juniper vMX – Getting Started Guide (VMware) January 7. You can download vMX directly from the vMX download page. And then on the next screen browse to the correct datastore and select the jinstall64-vmx-15.1F4.15-domestic.vmdk image that you uploaded earlier. *Disclaimer: (aka The boring legal stuff) VMX is a free, non commercial system, made purely for the love and challenge. If you enjoy it, help keep it alive by supporting the project by either donating in the download option, via Patreon or by purchasing some of my music.

I’m excited to finally have the opportunity to play with Juniper’s vMX! Since it was announced last year I’ve been eagerly waiting for release – a couple of client projects already have passed by where the vMX would have been a perfect fit. vMX already won an earlier this year at Interop Tokyo 2015! In this post I’ll be giving a bit of background on the vMX architecture and licensing, and then go on to walk through a lab based configuration of vMX.

The vMX is a virtual MX Series Router that is optimized to run as software on x86 servers. Like other MX routers, it runs Junos, and Trio has been compiled for x86! Yes, that means the sophisticated L2, L2.5 and L3 forwarding features we are used to on the MX are present on the vMX. Architecture vMX can be installed on server hardware of your choice, so long as it is x86 based and running Linux (although I’m sure a version to run on vmware won’t be too far away). VMX itself actually consists of two separate VMs – a virtual forwarding plane (VFP) running the vTrio, and a virtual control plane (VCP) running Junos. The Linux virtualisation solution KVM is what Juniper are using to spin up the virtual instances of the control and forwarding planes, and multiple instances of vMX can be run on the same hardware. To see Juniper using Linux and KVM is no surprise as this is what we are used to on Juniper’s other products such as the QFX. The VMs are managed by a simple orchestration script which is used to create, stop and start the vMX instances.

A simple configuration file defines parameters such as memory and vCPUs to allocate to the VCP and VFP. A couple of Linux bridges are created by the orchestration script. Clearly VCP and VFP need to be able to communicate directly so an “internal” bridge is automatically created for each vMX instance to enable this communication. An “external” bridge is also created, this is used to enable the management interface on the Linux Physical host to be used for the virtual management interfaces on the VCP and VFP. For data interfaces, there are a couple of techniques available for packet I/O depending on the required vMX throughput – • Paravirtualisation using KVMs virtio drivers • PCI passthrough using single root I/O virtualisation (SR-IOV), enabling packets to bypass the hypervisor and therefore increase I/O. Juniper recommend virtio or SR-IOV up to 3Gbps, and SR-IOV over 3Gbps (using a minimum of 2 x 10GE interfaces).

Which you will choose will ultimately depend on your use case for the vMX. Licensing Now this is what I really like about vMX!

We take requests.

Licensing is based on a combination of throughput and features, and the lowest available throughput license is 100Mbps! Yes – you don’t need to be shifting multi-Gigabits of traffic to start with vMX. You can start small and pay-as-you-grow with vMX. Below 1Gbps there are only 3 options – 100Mbps, 250Mbps and 500Mbps. Full scale features are included! List price on the 100Mbps option is a very reasonable $750.

At 1Gbps and above, licences are a combination of features (Base, Advance, and Premium) and full duplex throughput (1G, 5G, 10G, 40G) • Base – IP routing with 32,000 routes in the forwarding table. Basic Layer 2 functionality, Layer 2 bridging and switching. • Advance – Features in the BASE application package IP routing with routes up to platform scale in the forwarding table.  Download whats app for nokia 2700classic free. IP and MPLS switching for unicast and multicast applications. Layer 2 features include Layer 2 VPN, VPLS, EVPN, and Layer 2 Circuit VXLAN. • Premium – Features in the BASE and ADVANCE application packages. Layer 3 VPN for IP and multicast Setting up vMX on Ubuntu Now I’m going to walk through setting up vMX on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS server (Juniper’s recommended flavour of Linux for vMX). Just for fun this is actually running as a nested Vmware VM on my Macbook Pro – fine for a lab, but don’t try this in production!