Juniper Vmx Download For Eveng Free [updated] May 2026

The Ultimate Guide: Juniper vMX Download for EVE-NG Free (Community Edition)

Introduction: The Quest for a Free vMX Lab

For network engineers and Juniper JNCIP/JNCIE candidates, EVE-NG (Emulated Virtual Environment – Next Generation) is the holy grail of emulation. It allows you to run full Juniper JunOS instances without physical hardware. However, there is a persistent myth that running a Juniper vMX (Virtual MX Series Router) on the free version of EVE-NG is impossible.

The reality? It is entirely possible, but it requires understanding a specific workflow. Unlike vSRX or vQFX, the vMX has a unique architecture: it splits the control plane (Routing Engine - VCP) and data plane (Packet Forwarding Engine - VFP). juniper vmx download for eveng free

This article provides a step-by-step blueprint for a Juniper vMX download for EVE-NG free setup. We will cover where to legally obtain the images, how to convert them, and how to bypass the pitfalls of the free EVE-NG (Community Edition), which lacks native vMX support.

1. Download process is cumbersome

  • Requires a Juniper account (free, but approval can take hours to a day).
  • You must download two components:
    • vMX-vmdisk-<version>.qcow2 (disk image)
    • vMX-vcp-<version>.qcow2 (control plane)
  • Then you need to convert them to .img or compatible format for EVE-NG.

License Expiration

If you are using the official trial:

  • You can check the license status in the Junos CLI: show system license.
  • If expired, you can often request a new trial key from the Juniper portal if you have a valid support contract. If not, you must delete the node in EVE and deploy a new image file.

Step 1: Downloading the Juniper vMX Image

To get the image, you have two main paths.

Part 6: Optimization for Free EVE-NG (Low RAM)

If you are running the free EVE-NG on a laptop with only 16GB or 32GB of RAM, multiple vMX nodes will crash. Here is how to optimize: The Ultimate Guide: Juniper vMX Download for EVE-NG

  1. Reduce VFP RAM: You can lower the VFP RAM to 1024MB for basic ping tests.
  2. Disable Unnecessary Services: On the VCP: 
    set system services extension-service request-response-grpc disable
set system no-ping-response
  3. Use junos-vmx-x86-64 version 18.2: This version uses significantly less CPU than vMX 3.0+.

5) Fix permissions and cleanup

  • Run: /opt/unetlab/wrappers/unl_wrapper -a fixpermissions
  • Remove the temporary extraction directory.

Uploading to EVE-NG Proper

The free EVE-NG requires images to be in specific folders with specific naming conventions.

  1. Create directories for vMX:

    mkdir -p /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/vmx-20.1-vcp
mkdir -p /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/vmx-20.1-vfp

  2. Move and rename the images:

    • The Control Plane image must be named hda.qcow2.
    • The Forwarding Plane image must be named virtioa.qcow2.
    # For VCP (Routing Engine)
mv /tmp/vcp.img /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/vmx-20.1-vcp/hda.qcow2