Standing Up Cisco CSR1000v .iso on Google Cloud Platform RHEL VM

Question

I have a Cisco Cloud Service Router 1000v, CSR1000, .iso image that is advertised to run on KVM. I launched a RHEL 1 vCPU, 0.6 GB w assigned public IP and default private IP and uploaded the image.

I was able to mount it and see the boot and boot.catalog files.

[ron@csr1000 ~]$ sudo mkdir /mnt/tmp
[ron@csr1000 ~]$ sudo mount -t iso9660 -o loop csr1000v-universalk9.03.11.00.S.154-1.S-std.iso /mnt/tmp
mount: /dev/loop0 is write-protected, mounting read-only

[ron@csr1000 ~]$ sudo cd /mnt/tmp
[ron@csr1000 ~]$ sudo ls -a
. .bash_history .bash_profile csr1000v-universalk9.03.11.00.S.154-1.S-std.iso
.. .bash_logout .bashrc .ssh
[ron@csr1000 ~]$ dir
csr1000v-universalk9.03.11.00.S.154-1.S-std.iso

[ron@csr1000 ~]$ cd /mnt/tmp
[ron@csr1000 tmp]$ ls -a
.  ..  boot  boot.catalog

Then modified /etc/fstab to tell the box to boot the CSR .iso upon startup.

[ron@csr1000 ~]$ sudo su -
Last login: Mon Oct 31 20:56:18 UTC 2016 on pts/0
[root@csr1000 ~]# ls -l /etc/fstab
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 318 Oct 31 20:58 /etc/fstab
[root@csr1000 ~]# vi /etc/fstab
[root@csr1000 ~]# reboot

...and still nothing.

Do I need to stand up a virtual serial port?

Cisco CSR 1000v Series Cloud Services Router Software Configuration Guide indicates a vert-install command but I can't find it...?

UPDATE: I was able to get much closer to standing up a CSR1000v on GCE. You have to run virtualbox on your laptop, create an 'other linux 64bit' machine serial port enabled and point to the .iso on the virtual CD/DVD drive. Spin it up then shut down vbox then (using cygwin or linux) create an oldgnu format tar.gz called disk.tar.gz from the .qcow file. Gotta be named disk. Upload that to Gstorage Bucket, create custom image using that storage bucket. create new vm using that image, then watch it not boot correctly via serial port ssh and get angry. :-)

Answer 1

After a few days of trying all kinds of ways including, KVM, Qemu, and Hyper-V I concluded that GCP VM's do not allow virtual machines to run on them. The virtualization extensions aren't there.

So then I tried within the GCP GUI to create a custom instance but that failed as well. I even converted the csr1000v.iso to a tar.gz for GCP storage but could not import that as an instance. So, I give up.

However, the good news is that I was able to get it working on Amazon Web Services as an EC2 instance. It was rather easy. I published a how-to guide. Below are the highlights of that guide.

Step 1. Launch the CSR1000v Instance (on AWS)

Now that you have your AWS account setup and SSH client downloaded proceed to the AWS homepage.

• Click EC2 to navigate to the EC2 Dashboard. Click Launch Instance.
• Now navigate to AWS Marketplace in the left-hand menu. Search the AWS
• Marketplace for cisco1000v and choose the result with the Bring Your
• Own License, BYOL, option. Accept the software and launch it using
• all default settings.

Step 2. Connect to the CSR1000v Instance

• Click Connect once the virtual machine is running and choose the Putty option. Download the SSH key .pem file and make note of where you have saved it on your computer.
• Convert the aws-key-pair.pem file to an aws-key-pair.ppk file that Putty can use by launching puttygen.exe, navigating to File > Import Private Key, and then clicking Save Private Key. Note that you will need to set the file explorer to display All Files (.) so that the aws-key-pair.pem file displays as an option. Launch putty.exe SSH client and put the address of your EC2 instance in the host field.
• Click Connection > SSH > Auth and browse to the location of your aws-key-pair.ppk file then click Open to open the SSH connection.
• At the login prompt enter ec2-user as the username. You should now be logged in to your CSR1000v virtual router.

Step 3. Configure Your CSR1000v Router

Congratulations! You now have a working Cisco router. Your Cisco router is rich with features such as voice, video, security, vpn, and many other technologies now at your fingertips. See Cisco Cloud Services Router 1000V Series At-a-Glance document for details.

A few commands to get you started are:

show version
show run
show ip interfaces brief