According to Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product, the minimum viable product, or MVP, is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future development. This is similar to the proof of concept that we are all familiar with. Before we deploy a new technology, we put it in the lab and run tests against it. There is no way to replicate production, but the second best option is to use minimum viable product for production simulation.

In this book, we have been using VIRL and virtual machines to create our own minimum viable network for practice. The beauty of virtual machine and simulation tools, such as VIRL and GNS3, cannot be overstated. Perhaps the best thing about software defined networking is that there are plenty of MVP tools we can use, many of them with very little footprint, such as a virtual machine. We have seen SDNHub's all-in-one VM bundled with Mininet and various controllers. It is easier than ever before for us to properly simulate our future network.