Phase 1 — CCNA Lab & Emulation (Completed)

Status: Completed — Sandbox, Not Production

This phase was a practice lab (sandbox) built to prepare for the Cisco CCNA. It was never a production network: configurations were temporary and recreated per lab.

The goal was to bridge theoretical routing and switching concepts with hands-on execution using a hybrid approach: physical Cisco switches for authentic Layer 2/3 behavior, alongside Proxmox virtualization and EVE-NG for virtual node emulation.

What It Was Used For

• Switching practice: VLANs, 802.1Q trunking, inter-VLAN routing (SVIs), STP, and LACP scenarios.
• Routing practice: OSPF and routing fundamentals in EVE-NG, bridged to the physical switches.
• Real hardware feel: a Catalyst 3560-CX (L3) and a Catalyst 2960 (L2) to practice on real IOS instead of emulation alone.
• Incident practice: real Layer 1/2/3 failures during build-out, documented in Troubleshooting.

Section Map

1 Architecture Lab hardware and the practice topology used for CCNA labs.

2 Hypervisor Proxmox installation, storage, and resource allocation.

3 Emulation EVE-NG deployment and Cisco IOU/QEMU images.

4 Labs & Topologies Lab diagrams used for OSPF, VLAN, and switching practice.

5 Troubleshooting Root cause analyses resolved during lab build-out.