Most folks stick to using VM’s in GNS3, but the Docker integration is pretty awesome and has some very real benefits over VM’s. But in my humble and honest opinion, Ubuntu just works better for GNS3. Not to knock the Windows and Mac versions, the GNS3 team worked hard on those. Simply put, GNS3 runs the way it’s supposed to on Ubuntu. So using Ubuntu as your desktop OS means you’re cutting out all of that complexity with the server VM, not to mention the additional RAM consumed. That server VM runs a Linux OS, specifically Ubuntu. Why is Ubuntu better to run GNS3? You may have noticed that on Windows or Mac versions of GNS3, the server has to run on a VM to work properly. GNS3 has many features, but today we’ll just look at getting it installed, along with Docker. You can run Cisco routers and switches, other vendor network vendors, Windows Desktop and Server, Linux and any other OS that is supported by Linux’s QEMU/KVM hypervisor which is pretty much anything. It allows you to pull in real VM’s, and even Docker containers into an emulated network environment for testing and experimentation.

If you’re not familiar with GNS3, you’re missing out. Every major OS has its place, so I’m not hoping to get into that discussion, but I find that Ubuntu Linux works really well for creating network labs in GNS3.

Gns3 labs download