If we want a cool personal lab environment, then we have to use cool tools and technology. Virtual machines are one of the best inventions for learning and practicing IT in isolated environments. We can simulate and test Operating System changes, kernel modifications and even network configurations from our chair on our PC or notebook. Let’s build a basic test lab!
Create a new virtual machine
We’ve already installed our VMWare Workstation Pro, now we want to start using it and to install some basic virtual machines. We do not touch the networking feature for now, let’s leave it for later.
There will be two different functions for this environment:
- Vulnerability scanning and ethical hacking, penetrations testing lab (Linux and Windows)
- General Linux configuration and experiment (mostly Debian Linux)
We’ve already started learning to automate with Ansible: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. We will continue the (almost full) automation of our lab.
We can either import virtual machine images into our Workstation Pro, and it is possible to download and run installers, and perform Operating System installations from scratch. We will do both methods (and we will create our own virtual machine images as well).
Import a VM image
Our first virtual machine to import is our most important and versatile tool in penetrations testing: our Kali Linux. Luckily the Kali team has downloadable VMWare images on their homepage, so we have to navigate there and grab the latest image.
To be able to extract the files we need a tool called 7-Zip. Let’s extract the files and move them to our virtual machines folder. It is my Documents\Virtual Machines folder on my notebook.
Then we can use the Open a Virtual Machine button on the VMWare Workstation Pro Home screen to import a virtual machine image in our Workstation Pro.
Browse the the VM folder for the virtual machine .vmx file and open it.
It will open the VM image with the default settings and depending on our hardware the new machine will appear in the list in seconds. We can modify the configuration with right clicking on the machine and using the Settings menu point from the drop down.
The default network and hardware configuration is good for us at the moment.
We will import a Windows 11 development machine too from the Microsoft Dev Center with the same technique. Let’s download and import the VM.
Install a machine
We can download any supported installers and perform a system installation as we’d do it on physical hardware. Debian Linux has a small installer that downloads the necessary packages directly from the internet. Let’s grab this minimal installer image!
When we have our installer image on our local disk we will use the Create a New Virtual Machine button from the Home screen.
The dialogue is a next-next-finish task here too.
The first step welcomes us in the wizard and asks if we want to do an advanced installation. We need a typical install now.
The next screen collects information about the guest operating system we want to install. Let’s browse out our Debian installer iso and use it.
Then we can choose a name to our virtual machine and we can browse out where do we want to create it.
It is followed by the virtual disk configuration. The last screen will show us the summary of the configuration of our new virtual machine. Here we can either customize the hardware or close the dialogue and start the installation process.
After closing the new virtual machine wizard, if we enabled to power on the virtual machine, then the installation will happen as we’d install Debian Linux on physical hardware. The install time depends on our hardware and internet speed. Let’s install our Debian Linux minimal machine!
Snapshots
Snapshots are great to quickly save a machine’s state and try out something, then revert to the original state of the thing we tried did not work.
Taking a snapshot about a virtual machine means saving the current state, all the files and the services, everything at that specific moment.
When we created a snapshot from that time the differences of the files system will be written in separate files (delta files), and the original state of the VM is preserved. The snapshot will be available in the Snapshot Manager.
We can restore a snapshot that means to revert the machine to the state when we created the snapshot.
When we don’t need a snapshot we can simply drop it and the delta files will be merged with the original virtual machine files.
Clones
Cloning a virtual machine means copying its files and creating and identical version of it. The VMWare Workstation Pro has a built in functionality for cloning machines.
To create a clone of a virtual machine let’s click on the machine on our list, then choose the VM menu, Manage then the Clone option.
Linked clone
A linked clone is a copy of a virtual machine that shares virtual disks with the parent virtual machine in an ongoing manner. Linked clones are created from a snapshot of the parent machine. It means that linked clones only work if the original machine is available.
Full clone
A full clone is a complete and independent copy of a virtual machine. Full clones do not share virtual disks.
Delete a virtual machine
When we don’t need a virtual machine we can delete it from VMWare Workstation Pro. Let’s click on the machine, use the VM menu point and in the Manage we can use the Delete from Disk option.
With the above quick start we can build a personal lab that will perform well.
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