HP Network Simulators

There are HPE tools out there similar to Dynamips & GNS3 which will help build your own HP labs running the Comware operating system. Two systems I think you should know about, are the HPE VSR, and Simware.

VSR - HPE FlexNetwork Virtual Services Router

HPE's Virtual Service Router is a fully functional virtual router, designed to be deployed within your ESXi architecture.

It's available free of charge on a 60 day trial from the HP website, providing you have a HP Passport. It's not a simulation product, but a production ready virtual router which I think is extremely cost effective, and a great tool for building and testing network configurations. Because its production ready, you will be fully supported by the HPE support teams providing you have a valid support contract.

https://h10145.www1.hpe.com/downloads/SoftwareReleases.aspx?ProductNumber=JG811AAE

Simware

I tend to run and test a lot of my configs using HPE's Comware7 operating system in this HP networking simulator - which has been made freely available to the public! This runs an operating system called Simware, and its very closely aligned with Comware 7. You may notice certain features which don't quite work.. so far I've found that L2MPLS isn't functional.

http://h20564.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/public/readIndex?sp4ts.oid=7107839

Unfortunately, HPE don't seem to have ported the above page to the new HPE site - see the download links below for Simware & HP Comware Lab

HPE Comware Lab - Simware 7.1.59

This is the latest version of Simware, and runs a GUI so you can drag and drop your devices, and connect the interfaces together. It's also called H3C Cloudlab, just to add to the confusion.

http://h20565.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?sp4ts.oid=7107838&swItemId=nw_148568_1&swEnvOid=4132

Simware - 7.1.50

This is the initial version which runs directly in VirtualBox, and can be found here.

http://h20565.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/public/readIndex?sp4ts.oid=7107838&swLangOid=8&swEnvOid=4132

If you are having trouble setting this up, I had some assistance from Geir Leirvik (many thanks!!) who pointed me to this fix -

If you are using a newer version of Virtualbox - you may receive the error:

Virtualbox is not installed yet. Please install it first

or

Error relaunching virtualbox vm process 5

Virtualbox changed their environment variables which means that Simware no longer can see that Virtualbox is installed. Add a new environment variable called "VBOX_INSTALL_PATH"