*UPDATE* After tinkering around with Spice and QXL VGA driver, I’ve found that increases performance exponentially as well. Update highlighted below.
How I get a Windows guest running smoothly in GNS3 using virtIO drivers, sysprep, and creating a linked base.
This can be especially useful for testing FirePOWER services, integrating Active Directory, or just having a jump host living inside your GNS3 labs. Leveraging a local GNS3 Windows guest provides ease of use for these tasks, and can provide adequate separation between your local network and your lab typologies. Here are some useful download links (provided in video description as well).
Windows Trials:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2012-r2
VirtIO Drivers:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Windows_Virtio_Drivers#Direct_download
Spice Guest Drivers
https://www.spice-space.org/download/windows/spice-guest-tools/spice-guest-tools-latest.exe
GNS3 Additional Settings:
These additional options, referenced and demonstrated in the video above, help smooth out issues with Window’s clock (assuming your GNS3 is using the correct timezone, and it’s local clock is correct), and issues with touch pad users (e.g. running GNS3 gui on your laptop).
-nographic -usbdevice tablet -vga qxl -rtc base=localtime
GNS3 Custom Icons
I’ve had some requests for my custom GNS3 icons. As of this posting, I don’t see any (legal) reason preventing me from sharing these, link below.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mmreoqhpjn0mlfa/GNS3_Cust_Icons.zip?dl=0
Enjoy, and lab on.
