Creating a Virtual Server

As a graduate student in an Information Assurance program, I have the need to run a variety of operating systems as I attempt to discover the vulnerabilities in the various systems and perform the necessary changes to secure them.

There are multiple ways to set up a lab and one such method is to set up multiple hardware units each running their own operating systems.   But that can get costly and can result in some serious time investment - particularly if an operating system gets compromised - in setting up the various systems.  An alternative is to set up a virtual lab.   VMWare is the leader in virtual systems - at least in my opinion.   So here's a quick start on setting up a virtual lab for your various Operating Systems.

Software:
If you're looking for a good Hypervisor, you should go with ESX Server 4.0i.   This is a bare metal hypervisor - which means that it works without the need for any underlying OS - and provides the best performance.

Hardware:
You can spend as much or as little on the hardware as you want to.   Here's a sampling of what you can use to put together a server.

4GB of Memory                  $89

Q9550 Quad Core Processor     $179

1.5TB Hard Drive              $150

Gigabyte EP45-UD3R Mobo        $89

Case/Power Supply             $100

Video Card                     $39

Intel Gb NIC                   $20

So, for about $650 you can put together a pretty solid system.   What should be noted is that regardless of the motherboard you get, you should not use the onboard LAN card and simply add an Intel NIC.   Using an Intel NIC is a surefire way to ensure that ESXi installs without any issues.

Once the hardware is put together and before we move forward with the install it is best to run Memtest on the new hardware.   There's NOTHING worst than trying to setup a new computer than having poor memory or hardware that causes crashes.   If after running Memtest for a few hours and getting no errors you can proceed with the installation of the software.   The software basically installs itself and there's very few setup options (other than setting the IP address if you don't want to let it use DHCP).

Next couple of days we'll look at the remote administration.