VMWare Guru's - Suggestions on how to do this on a home lab level?
BlackBeret
Member Posts: 683 ■■■■■□□□□□
in Off-Topic
This isn't certification related, but I know there are a lot of VMware guy's on here that could answer this in their sleep. If there's a study path that would put me on the right track for VMware security, ESXi plus whatever suggestions you guys have for my problem below, I'd be interested in it as well. Everything's going to virtualization and I need to learn it.
Where I'm not now - I'm completely new to VMWare's product lineup and from what I'm reading a lot of things overlap but have different overall functions. I've been running my home lab on an Ubuntu server setup with Virtual Box running about 6 VM's. I decided I wanted to make a change, learn vmware, and rebuild my lab to be more enterprise like by installing a virtual firewall, security monitoring software, etc. The easiest way at the time to do this seemed to be by replacing my Ubuntu server with ESXi. Due to compatibility issues with my onboard NIC I'm using 5.1 instead of 6. I managed to get this all converted over, install the vsphere client, and I'm learning how to configure the networking within ESXi and the firewall (pfsense) in order to route the traffic the way I want.
When I was running everything on the Ubuntu server I managed it all locally, ran my VM's locally, etc. It was nice and easy. What I didn't realize when converting over (didn't research enough) was that you can't manage ESXi and run the VM's locally.The remote management with VSphere is okay now that I'm learning it. It's much more powerful than Virtual Box is and I like that, although it kills the user friendliness. The issue I'm having is with the speed and display of the VM's across the network. While the majority of the VM's running on the server are fine for back-end things, there were 3 that I was planning to use as desktops for different purposes.
What I'm trying to find out - Is there a VM solution that will allow me to run these as desktops remotely from ESXi to a laptop without the lag I find in the VSphere counsel? Should VSphere not be lagging or having rough color displays and I need to investigate it on my host side before I explore other options? I'm looking at the VMWare Workstation and VMware Horizon with View client options. Workstation seems like a good product, but like it might have the lag I'm seeing with VSphere. Horizon with View seems like it's well beyond my needs. Should I just enable RDP on all of my VM's and try that?
Where I'm not now - I'm completely new to VMWare's product lineup and from what I'm reading a lot of things overlap but have different overall functions. I've been running my home lab on an Ubuntu server setup with Virtual Box running about 6 VM's. I decided I wanted to make a change, learn vmware, and rebuild my lab to be more enterprise like by installing a virtual firewall, security monitoring software, etc. The easiest way at the time to do this seemed to be by replacing my Ubuntu server with ESXi. Due to compatibility issues with my onboard NIC I'm using 5.1 instead of 6. I managed to get this all converted over, install the vsphere client, and I'm learning how to configure the networking within ESXi and the firewall (pfsense) in order to route the traffic the way I want.
When I was running everything on the Ubuntu server I managed it all locally, ran my VM's locally, etc. It was nice and easy. What I didn't realize when converting over (didn't research enough) was that you can't manage ESXi and run the VM's locally.The remote management with VSphere is okay now that I'm learning it. It's much more powerful than Virtual Box is and I like that, although it kills the user friendliness. The issue I'm having is with the speed and display of the VM's across the network. While the majority of the VM's running on the server are fine for back-end things, there were 3 that I was planning to use as desktops for different purposes.
What I'm trying to find out - Is there a VM solution that will allow me to run these as desktops remotely from ESXi to a laptop without the lag I find in the VSphere counsel? Should VSphere not be lagging or having rough color displays and I need to investigate it on my host side before I explore other options? I'm looking at the VMWare Workstation and VMware Horizon with View client options. Workstation seems like a good product, but like it might have the lag I'm seeing with VSphere. Horizon with View seems like it's well beyond my needs. Should I just enable RDP on all of my VM's and try that?
Comments
-
gc8dc95
Member Posts: 206 ■■□□□□□□□□
I typically use RDP. The consoles are just for basic usage or to fix an issue.
-
iBrokeIT
Member Posts: 1,318 ■■■■■■■■■□
Do you have VM tools installed on all of your guest OSes?
VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine's guest operating system and improves management of the virtual machine. Without VMware Tools installed in your guest operating system, guest performance lacks important functionality. Installing VMware Tools eliminates or improves these issues:- Low video resolution
- Inadequate color depth
- Incorrect display of network speed
- Restricted movement of the mouse
- Inability to copy and paste and drag-and-drop files
- Missing sound
- Provides the ability to take quiesced snapshots of the guest OS
- Synchronizes the time in the guest operating system with the time on the host
- Provides support for guest-bound calls created with the VMware VIX API
2019: GPEN | GCFE | GXPN | GICSP | CySA+
2020: GCIP | GCIA
2021: GRID | GDSA | Pentest+
2022: GMON | GDAT
2023: GREM | GSE | GCFA
WGU BS IT-NA | SANS Grad Cert: PT&EH | SANS Grad Cert: ICS Security | SANS Grad Cert: Cyber Defense Ops | SANS Grad Cert: Incident Response -
BlackBeret
Member Posts: 683 ■■■■■□□□□□
Thanks iBrokeIT. Virtual Box had the same thing, I completely forgot about installing the tools on the guest OS. I'm still setting everything up so I'll see if that helps.