Many GNS3 users like the idea of keeping the simulation environment on a separate virtual machine. This partly arose because early versions of GNS3 and even Dynamips were less stable on Windows platforms, or perhaps it was more a case of having a more detrimental effect on the underlying platform when the program crashed. Whatever the reason, running GNS3 in a virtual machine, typically Linux based, is a popular way of running GNS3.
GNS3 WorkBench is one such example of a packaged virtual machine running GNS3 on a Linux base. GNS3 WorkBench is a free download available from my blog site at http://rednectar.net/gns3-workbench and comes with prepackaged tutorials. In this section I will describe how I have connected multiple copies of GNS3 working together by using GNS3 WorkBench installed on Windows computers.
Scenario: You have multiple Windows computers on which you wish to run GNS3, perhaps a lab or a classroom setup. You have...