The installation of GNS3 on windows is a three part installation.
- VMware Player – VMware Player is available at no cost for non-commercial, personal, and home use.
- GNS3 VM – Think of the VM as the back-end server for the GNS3 GUI. This is where your iosv, ios, qemu, dockers, etc run on.
- GNS3 All-in-One – This is includes the GNS3 GUI, putty, winpcap drivers, wireshark, etc.

VMware Player Installation









No license required for non-commercial use



Installation of VMware Player is now complete. Next we will extract and import the GNS3 VM
Next browse to the GNS3 VM OVA File double click and import


From VMware Player edit the GNS3 VM Settings and enable “virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT”
Play the virtual machine to start it and make note of the IP address

Next its time to install the GNS3-all-in-one








Installation complete

Time to start GNS3


From the host binding drop down select the same network as the GNS3 VM and click Next. Ex. 192.168.159.0/24 might be different for you

If you get the “VMware vmrun tool could not be found” error. You need to download and install the VIX API




Our GNS3 installation is now complete. Head over to our iosv & vios image installation to complete your install.