Lab Note: Fixing Duplicate Serial Numbers on Catalyst 9000v in EVE-NG

When building out Cisco Catalyst 9000v and Cisco SDA labs in EVE-NG, I encountered a subtle but critical issue that breaks DNAC onboarding: duplicate serial numbers.

This post presents this little detail on picking a good version for labbing.

The Problem: Catalyst Center (aka DNAC) Rejects Duplicate Serial Numbers

I spun up two instances of Catalyst 9000v running IOS XE 17.10.01-prd7 in EVE-NG. Everything booted fine — until I tried to import the devices into Cisco Catalyst Center. The second instance was never successfully onboarded. After much of looking at the logs, Catalyst Center complains duplicate serial number.

The Fix: Upgrade to 17.15.01

Out of curiosity, I loaded up IOS XE 17.15.01 on a fresh Catalyst 9000v VM in EVE-NG.

To my surprise:

• Each instance now reports a different serial number by default.

• Catalyst Center accepts both devices without conflict.

Final Note

I’m sharing this post as a lab note for anyone studying or building a Cisco Software-Defined Access (SDA) lab using Catalyst 9000v in EVE-NG. If you run into issues with duplicate serial numbers — especially when onboarding devices to Catalyst Center (formerly DNAC) — upgrading to IOS XE 17.15.01 is a simple and effective fix.

Hopefully, this saves others from hours of head-scratching during their SDA lab journey.

May 2025