GNS3 Talks: Multiple clients sharing projects in real time, plus console session shadowing!

Key Takeaways

jeanna 32.0 introduces a number of changes and new features in this video we're going to discuss a really cool feature available in Jenny's 32.0 which is the ability to have multiple users connected to the same project [Music] this is a new feature available in 2.0 and allows multiple users to be connected to the same project running on a server and see each other's changes in real time and collaborate on projects together if you open up a console on a router as an example you'll be able to see the commands Center by others so we have shadowing of console sessions you can find out more information about this by going to the Genesee website clicking documentation and searching for one gns3 server multiple clients the supplies once again to genus 3 2.0 and later only this allows you to create a central g-iii server and have multiple gns3 clients connected to that server everything is synchronized changes are made in real-time appliance images will be uploaded via the GUI and are stored on the remote server now please note this is an advanced use of genus 3 it's recommended that you first get a local install working before you try and do this there is also no user isolation all users can view all projects and modify them so the first step is to set up a server I'll show you that in a separate video in this video I want to show you how to connect a client to an existing server and show you how nicely this works so in this example I have genus 32.0 running on a Mac and I've also got gns3 2.20 running in Windows I've already configured that the Windows PC so I'm going to show you how to set up the Mac the process is very similar and then in a separate video we'll show you how to set up the server to set up the client go to help setup wizard and to select this option run everything on the remote server at the moment I only have a local install of gns3 but what I'm going to do now is move everything to the remote server so I'm gonna click Next I need to specify the host name of the server so in my example it's 192 168 1 161 as you can see that's the IP address configured on my Windows PC the genus 3 VM is running within ESXi and to help with their recordings what I've actually done here is I'm running ESXi within VMware Workstation on my Windows PC but you could run that on a separate ESXi server I've got the genie 3 vm there for running on my ESXi server and the IP address of the genie 3 server is 192 168 1 161 I'm not going to enable authentication this is a simple lab that I've got at home but if you're sharing using a cloud base 2 solution you probably want to enable authentication click Next notice the local server is being stopped and suddenly I now have a connection to the server also shown in the summary I can now click finish you can now upload an image to the server so as an example you could upload an iOS router image a VMware virtual machine a docker container or other options I'm going to click cancel at this point and go to projects a library which is showing me the projects available on the server this one is currently opened by the other client so I'm going to select that option and click OK now what you'll notice is it's the same topology as I'm seeing on the Windows PC what I'll do is make my Mac window smaller and move the Windows PC down here and notice what happens when I drag a junior 3 VM onto my Windows workspace it shows up on the Mac workspace I'll connect a device on the Windows PC I'll show the labels on this device show them over here I'll start up the devices in Windows notice they've gone green they green on the Mac as well I'll open up a console on Windows three consoles have shown up open up a console on the Mac I'll change the settings on windows to make it clearer to see what's going on so here's my Windows PC here's my Mac notice what happens quantity on a Mac press Enter create a loopback I'll jump into the Windows PC and create a loop back here so that console was hidden so I'll do it again so IP address 1.1.1 to 5 5 to 5 5 to 5 5 to 5 5 go on to the Mac router OSPF one network and enable OSPF on all interfaces notice whenever I type on one console it ends up on the other console now I'm on the windows console I'll jump back to the Mac console I can drag another writer to the topology becomes available on the other client so this is a really nice feature available in Gianna 32.0 I'm running the Gina 3 VM in ESXi I have two clients connected to that ESXi server so engine is three preferences under server notice the local server is not enabled we have a remote main server and this is the configuration of the remote server under server summary on both Windows and the Mac I only have a connection to the remote server so anything I do on one instance of gns3 is replicated to the other instance or the other client so I can move my devices around and that's replicated on the other client I could add another device to the topology and cable that device and that becomes available on the other client once again any changes made on the one client is shown on the other client I'm typing in Windows now and I could create additional interfaces and simply change the configuration as needed and that config is replicated on the other client be aware that if you shut it down jeanna 3 on the one client it will affect the other client the project is therefore shut down here because I shut it down on Windows so this is a really nice feature in Genie 3 you can now share topologies via central server with others and multiple users can work on the same project at the same time whatever the one user does is replicated to the other users so as an example if you have a teacher and students they can share the configuration the teacher can shatter the students and help them with their configuration I hope you found this video useful if it's been a benefit to you please like it and please subscribe to my youtube channel I wish you all the very best you