Firewalls and third-party router virtual appliances can be downloaded directly from their respective support portals (e.g., Palo Alto Customer Support Portal, Fortinet Support) under trial or partner licenses.
Before uploading, you must understand what file type you have:
In this story, we'll take a deep dive into the process of downloading images in Eve-NG, exploring the various types of images available, the download process, and some best practices to keep in mind. eve-ng download images
To make this practical, here is the exact workflow for adding a Cisco vIOS image:
Most network device operating systems are copyrighted commercial products. Downloading them from unofficial torrent sites, file-sharing forums, or unlicensed repositories is copyright infringement. Legitimate sources include: Firewalls and third-party router virtual appliances can be
The most immediate hurdle for users is obtaining the images themselves. — it only offers community or professional versions of the emulator framework. The responsibility to acquire images rests entirely on the user, and this is where legal and ethical considerations come into play.
due to legal and licensing restrictions. To build a network topology, network engineers must obtain official operating system files from vendors like Cisco or Palo Alto, and manually upload them into the Emulated Virtual Environment Next Generation ( EVE-NG ) backend. The responsibility to acquire images rests entirely on
Because EVE-NG is an emulation platform, it acts as a hypervisor wrapper (using QEMU/KVM, IOL, and Dynamips). You must source the underlying raw images independently:
: Download the file (usually a .bin , .iso , .qcow2 , or .ova ). For many Cisco images, users extract the .qcow2 from an OVA package using tar or qemu-img convert .
Master Guide to EVE-NG Download Images: Setup, Naming, and Deployment
Even after uploading the image, many vendors require activation: