Juniper Virtual Switch

Juniper Virtual Switch setup using vJunos

In this post I am going to spin up a Juniper Virtual Switch in Containerlab using the vJunos Switch image which is available to download for free from:
https://www.juniper.net/us/en/dm/vjunos-labs.html

https://support.juniper.net/support/downloads/?p=vjunos

Direct Download link for vJunos-switch-24.4R1.9.qcow2

Once I have the image running I will then build a topology with 4 virtual switches connected to each other.

Free Virtual Junos OS Download for Labs 

Juniper provides the image for free for the purpose of Labs and testing. The virtual switch is not intended for production use.

Once you have downloaded the qcow image to use it in ContainerLab we need to convert it to a containerised image.

This is a qcow image which will not natively run in Containerlab so you have to convert it.

It is built using vrnetlab project and essentially is a Qemu VM packaged in a docker container format.

Head over to https://github.com/hellt/vrnetlab

Next clone this repo to your machine

git clone https://github.com/hellt/vrnetlab.git

cd into the directory of your chosen vendor, in my case vjunosswitch

I also need to SCP the image which I have downloaded on my Mac to my Containerlab Server. This may vary for you but you just need to get the vJunos switch image into the vjunosswitch folder.

The command for me looks like this

SCP vJunos-switch-24.2R1.9.qcow2 [email protected]:/home/roger/vrnetlab/vjunosswitch

Now I have the vJunos switch qcow image in the correct folder

Juniper Virtual Switch Interfaces

Juniper Virtual Switch FAQ

What is the difference between a physical switch and a virtual switch?

A physical switch is a standard network switch in a metal box that you rack in your data centre or wiring closet to provide network connectivity to servers or users. A virtual switch is a software image that you can run in a lab to simulate the physical switch for the purpose of testing automations etc. A virtual switch can also be part of a cloud network providing connectivity between servers.