Arista Warrior, 2nd Edition

Chapter 32. vEOS

When a software system is designed from the ground up to be flexible, scalable, and extensible, wonderful benefits occur. One of the marvelous things about EOS is that it can run without a physical switch, and with vEOS, we can build a functioning lab on our own laptops. We could also build labs with VMware or Fusion or Parallels or Virtual Box. In fact, I’m going to show you how to do just that, but first, let’s talk about what vEOS is and, perhaps just as importantly, what it is not.

vEOS is EOS, but built as a package for use as a virtual machine (VM). Though it would be wonderful for vEOS to support every feature that EOS can deliver, that is currently not possible, and the reason for that is simple: many of EOS’s features are dependent on the Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) used in the switches. That’s why a feature like tap aggregation is available only on certain platforms. Although it is technically feasible to write emulators that would give the appearance of the same functionality, that’s not what vEOS is about. Remember, vEOS is the same code as EOS—it’s just compiled for a VM environment. Remember, too, that Arista prides itself on the idea that all devices in the Arista lineup can use the same binary, so if vEOS were to be a separate code image, disparities would begin to surface, and that’s not how Arista likes to operate.

In reality, the limitations center around hardware, so think of it this way: If you had an Arista 7150 switch, ...