IOS XR is a
release train of
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...
' widely deployed
Internetwork Operating System (IOS), used on their high-end Network Convergence System (NCS) and carrier-grade
routers such as the
ASR 9000 series and
Carrier Routing System series of routers.
Architecture
According to Cisco's product literature, IOS XR shares very little infrastructure with the other IOS trains, and is instead built upon a "
preemptive,
memory protected,
multitasking,
microkernel-based operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
". The microkernel was formerly provided by
QNX; versions 6.0 up to 7.5.2 use the
Wind River Linux distribution. From version 7.6.1 and onwards, the kernel has been switched to
OpenEmbedded.
IOS XR aims to provide the following advantages over the earlier IOS trains:
* Improved
high availability
High availability (HA) is a characteristic of a system that aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period.
There is now more dependence on these systems as a result of modernization ...
(largely through support for
hardware redundancy and fault containment methods such as protected memory spaces for individual processes and process restartability)
* Better scalability for large hardware configurations (through a
distributed software infrastructure and a two-stage
forwarding architecture)
* A
package based software distribution model (allowing optional features such as
multicast routing and
MPLS to be installed and removed while the router is in service)
* The ability to install package upgrades and
patches (potentially while the router remains in service)
* A web-based
GUI for system management (making use of a generic,
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...
management interface)
History
IOS XR was announced along with the
CRS-1 in May 2004. The first generally available version was 2.0.
Some significant releases include the following.
* 3.2 – first generally available version for the
12000 router series
* 3.9 – first generally available version for the
ASR 9000 router series
* 5.0 – first generally available version for the NCS6000 series, which is based upon a
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...
instead of QNX, and was released in September 2013
* 6.1.1 - Introduces support for the 64-bit Linux-based IOS XR operating system on ASR 9000 series
Differences between IOS and IOS XR
An example BGP configuration for IOS and IOS XR is shown.
More examples can be found in the Cisco document ''Converting Cisco IOS Configurations to Cisco IOS XR Configurations''.
[{{cite web, title=Converting Cisco IOS Configurations to Cisco IOS XR Configurations, url=http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios_xr_sw/iosxr_r3-2/conversion/reference/guide/cnvt32/cn32main.pdf, website=cisco.com, publisher=Cisco Systems, accessdate=August 4, 2017]
IOS
router bgp 109
no synchronization
bgp log-neighbor-changes
neighbor 203.0.113.1 remote-as 109
neighbor 203.0.113.1 update-source Loopback0
no auto-summary
IOS XR
router bgp 109
neighbor 203.0.113.1
remote-as 109
update-source Loopback0
See also
*
Cisco IOS
*
Cisco IOS XE
*
Cisco NX-OS
References
External links
Cisco Content HubCisco Feature Navigator
- covering IOS XR and its supported systems
Cisco Security AdvisoriesHEAnet's New Network and Working with IOS-XR
Cisco products