--- title: Measuring Virtual Network Device Boot Times «... description: A benchmarking study measuring boot times and initial configuration deployment times for virtual network devices using netlab. VM-based devices (Cisco IOSv,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/measuring-virtual-network-device-boot-times-ipspace-net-blog-l6b2yvwrr twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Measuring Virtual Network Device Boot Times « ipSpace.net blog | daily.dev og:description: A benchmarking study measuring boot times and initial configuration deployment times for virtual network devices using netlab. VM-based devices (Cisco IOSv,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/measuring-virtual-network-device-boot-times-ipspace-net-blog-l6b2yvwrr og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/l6b2YVwrR.png og:image:alt: Measuring Virtual Network Device Boot Times « ipSpace.net blog og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Measuring Virtual Network Device Boot Times « ipSpace.net blog **[ipSpace.net Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/ipspace)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A benchmarking study measuring boot times and initial configuration deployment times for virtual network devices using netlab. VM-based devices (Cisco IOSv, Arista vEOS, vJunos, Cisco Catalyst 8000v, IOS XR, NX-OS) are compared, with Cisco IOSv being the fastest VM at ~55 seconds and Cisco NX-OS the slowest at ~3.5 minutes. Container-based devices are dramatically faster, with FRRouting booting in just 2 seconds, Juniper cRPD in 7.4 seconds, and Nokia SR Linux in 11.6 seconds. The post includes reproduction instructions using netlab, Vagrant, and containerlab, and notes that NX-OS boot time balloons significantly with many interfaces. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How long does it take to boot common virtual network devices like Cisco IOSv, Arista vEOS, and Junos in a lab environment? Boot times vary significantly by platform. Cisco IOSv is the fastest VM at ~55 seconds (index 100), followed by Arista vEOS at ~77 seconds (142), vJunos-switch/router at ~99 seconds (182-183), Cisco Catalyst 8000v at ~110 seconds (201), Cisco IOS XR 8000v at ~168 seconds (308), and Cisco NX-OS at ~202 seconds (370). These were measured on a 16-core, 64GB RAM server with no other workloads. _Network engineers building virtual labs track platform performance tradeoffs like these on daily.dev._ ### How much faster do container-based network devices boot compared to VM-based ones? Container-based network devices boot dramatically faster than VMs. FRRouting boots in 2 seconds, Juniper cRPD in 7.4 seconds, Nokia SR Linux in 11.6 seconds, Arista cEOS in 20.9 seconds, Nokia SR-SIM in 23.1 seconds, Cisco IOL in 29.3 seconds, and Cisco IOS XRd in 34.6 seconds — compared to the fastest VM (Cisco IOSv) at 54.5 seconds and the slowest (NX-OS) at over 3 minutes. _Engineers choosing between VM and container-based lab platforms find benchmark comparisons like this on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Cisco N9000 excels in EANTC 2026 VXLAN EVPN and timing tests](https://daily.dev/posts/cisco-n9000-excels-in-eantc-2026-vxlan-evpn-and-timing-tests-zhu6sk8o9) · Cisco · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#networking](https://daily.dev/tags/networking) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/measuring-virtual-network-device-boot-times-ipspace-net-blog-l6b2yvwrr) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Measuring Virtual Network Device Boot Times « ipSpace.net blog","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/measuring-virtual-network-device-boot-times-ipspace-net-blog-l6b2yvwrr","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/measuring-virtual-network-device-boot-times-ipspace-net-blog-l6b2yvwrr"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:56:01.155Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:07:44.373Z","description":"A benchmarking study measuring boot times and initial configuration deployment times for virtual network devices using netlab. 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Cisco IOSv is the fastest VM at ~55 seconds (index 100), followed by Arista vEOS at ~77 seconds (142), vJunos-switch/router at ~99 seconds (182-183), Cisco Catalyst 8000v at ~110 seconds (201), Cisco IOS XR 8000v at ~168 seconds (308), and Cisco NX-OS at ~202 seconds (370). These were measured on a 16-core, 64GB RAM server with no other workloads. Network engineers building virtual labs track platform performance tradeoffs like these on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"How much faster do container-based network devices boot compared to VM-based ones?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Container-based network devices boot dramatically faster than VMs. FRRouting boots in 2 seconds, Juniper cRPD in 7.4 seconds, Nokia SR Linux in 11.6 seconds, Arista cEOS in 20.9 seconds, Nokia SR-SIM in 23.1 seconds, Cisco IOL in 29.3 seconds, and Cisco IOS XRd in 34.6 seconds — compared to the fastest VM (Cisco IOSv) at 54.5 seconds and the slowest (NX-OS) at over 3 minutes. 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