Cisco Catalyst 8000V Edge Software Installation And Configuration Guide

Day 0 Configuration Using config-drive

Updated: March 5, 2026

Want to summarize with AI?

Overview

Provides the steps to configure the Day 0 settings by using the config-drive option.

You can use the --config-drive option to specify that the configuration is loaded when Cisco Catalyst 8000V is booting. In this option:

CD-ROMs and the second hard drive can be used to store the configuration information in the config-drive format.
The configuration information is available as a file with contents that match the format of either the iosxe_config.txt file or the ovf-env.xml file.

To use the config drive option for your day zero configuration, set the --config-drive option to true, and specify the name of the configuration file in which you enter the router configuration to be booted.

Xml or txt file

You can provide the configuration information as an xml file in the ovf-env.xml file format for OVF deployments or as a text file in the iosxe_config.txt file format.

Tip

Cisco recommends that you use only one configuration file type, either the .txt file or the .xml file, and not both.

See the sample configurations for xml and txt file configurations. Use one of the provided configurations to add your configuration file to the filesystem.

nova boot c8000v-vm-174 --image c8000v-174 --flavor c8000v.2vcpu.4gb --nic port-id=6773be11-7b95-48cd-b372-fb8a3cae2b50 --config-drive=true --file ovf-env.xml=/home/stack/conf_files/ut/ovf-env.xml

nova boot c8000v-vm-174 --image c8000v-174 --flavor c8000v.2vcpu.4gb --nic port-id=6773be11-7b95-48cd-b372-fb8a3cae2b50 --config-drive=true --file iosxe_config.txt=/home/stack/conf_files/ut/iosxe_config.txt

The system requires these hard-coded file names for the config-drive settings to boot.

Using user data

In certain environments such as OpenStack, use the user_data option to provide the file into the filesystem with the config-drive format. Here is the sample user data for the OpenStack environment:

openstack server create "admin-VK-C8KISOSerial-20210917" 
--config-drive true 
--image c8kv-image-176
--flavor m1.large 
--network mgmt-nt
--network prod-nt
--block-device-mapping id=admin-VK-EmptyVolume-SerialTest:type=volume 
--user-data userdata.txt

Need help?

Open a support case

(Requires a Cisco Service Contract)

The documentation set for this product strives to use bias-free language. For the purposes of this documentation set, bias-free is defined as language that does not imply discrimination based on age, disability, gender, racial identity, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality. Exceptions may be present in the documentation due to language that is hardcoded in the user interfaces of the product software, language used based on RFP documentation, or language that is used by a referenced third-party product. Learn more about how Cisco is using Inclusive Language.