In the world of network simulation, EVE-NG (Emulated Virtual Environment Next Generation) stands as a colossus. Whether you are prepping for a CCIE lab, testing a multi-vendor SD-WAN deployment, or simulating a cyber-attack, EVE-NG is the sandbox.
However, there is a common frustration that every EVE-NG user faces on Day 1: When you first install EVE-NG (Community or Professional), the platform is a shell. It has the engine, but no fuel. That fuel is the images —the IOSv, vEOS, XRv, vSRX, and Windows ISOs that run your nodes. Download All Eve-ng Images
So, how do you efficiently download and manage all these images without losing your mind? First, a hard truth: You cannot mass-download "all" images from a single, official source. EVE-NG does not host Cisco, Juniper, Arista, or Microsoft images due to copyright and licensing. You must legally obtain these images, typically via a support contract (Cisco.com, Juniper.net) or evaluation trials. In the world of network simulation, EVE-NG (Emulated
Do not just drop random .qcow2 or .vmdk files into the folder. You must fix permissions : It has the engine, but no fuel
/opt/unetlab/wrappers/unl_wrapper -a fixpermissions Manually downloading 20 different images from 5 different vendor portals is tedious. The community has built tools to automate this once you have the URLs .
| Vendor | Device | Required Filename (Example) | Source | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | IOSv / IOSvL2 | vios-adventerprisek9-m.vmdk.SPA.157-3.M8 | Cisco.com (Virl base images) | | Cisco | XRv (Router) | xrv9k-fullk9-x.vmdk-6.1.3 | Cisco.com | | Arista | vEOS | vEOS-lab-4.28.0F.vmdk | Arista.com (Free registration) | | Juniper | vSRX / vMX | junos-vsrx3-x86-64-21.2R1.13.qcow2 | Juniper.net (Eval license) | | Fortinet | FortiGate | fortios.qcow2 | Fortinet Support Portal | | Windows | Win10/Server | win2022.qcow2 | Microsoft Evaluation Center |
# SSH into your EVE-NG server cd /opt/unetlab/addons /opt/unetlab/wrappers/unl_wrapper -a docker | grep download # Check for community scripts Pro Tip: Use the built-in apply template for Linux boxes (Ubuntu, Alpine, Kali) which are freely available. Most modern network OSes run as QEMU images. Here is the standard checklist of what engineers actually mean by "all images":