Laptop for Live Course - SANS 560

n0bfun0bfu Registered Users Posts: 2 ■□□□□□□□□□
in GIAC
I'm taking a live course soon and am a little confused about the laptop requirements. I have a Macbook Pro with VMWare Fusion and meet all of the hardware requirements linked below. My question is why do you HAVE to have a Windows OS?

On the site below it says "The course includes a VMware image file of a guest Linux system that is larger than 3 GB. Therefore, you need a file system with the ability to read and write files that are larger than 2 GB, such as NTFS on a Windows machine."

Last time I checked I've had no issues running running my 52GB Kali vm, 8gb Ubuntu vm, 4GB XP vm, or 10GB win7 vm. Is the linux image in class not a *.vmdk that I can open in Fusion? I know macOS can read NTFS and can't write it, but how would that matter if we are given a VM image file?

I feel like I must be missing something, or that laptop details section page is incorrect.

https://www.sans.org/course/network-penetration-testing-ethical-hacking#section_with_details_laptop_description
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Comments

  • TechGuru80TechGuru80 Member Posts: 1,539 ■■■■■■□□□□
    Read above that section...it says some exercises in Windows and some in Linux. There shouldn’t be a need for Windows to be your host OS but you would want VMware, a Windows vm, and a Linux vm.
    Security Certification Roadmap
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  • n0bfun0bfu Registered Users Posts: 2 ■□□□□□□□□□
    TechGuru80 wrote: »
    Read above that section...it says some exercises in Windows and some in Linux. There shouldn’t be a need for Windows to be your host OS but you would want VMware, a Windows vm, and a Linux vm.

    Thank you, I have a Windows 10 vm I was going to bring along to fulfill the Windows vm requirement.

    Maybe I read too much into the sentence I quoted as needing it to be a Windows Host OS.
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  • TechGuru80TechGuru80 Member Posts: 1,539 ■■■■■■□□□□
    I saw tons of people using MAC at a previous conference including instructors...I cannot even really think of a reason these days why having Windows as the host vs guest would be necessary but I completely get it...sometimes we need a sanity check.
    Security Certification Roadmap
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  • TechGromitTechGromit Member Posts: 2,156 ■■■■■■■■■□
    I can't comment on MAC's, but for a Laptop, I'd recommend increasing the memory to 16 GB, the VM's tend to run better if you can give them a bigger slice of memory to work with. Also make sure you have full Admin rights to the computer, while I have enough admin rights on the computers I use at work to install program's I do not have rights to terminate/shut down the Anti-Virus running on it. I had to take a Work computer, wipe it and reinstall the operating system from scratch to get the full rights I needed for the SANS courses.
    Still searching for the corner in a round room.
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  • TechGromitTechGromit Member Posts: 2,156 ■■■■■■■■■□
    n0bfu wrote: »
    Last time I checked I've had no issues running running my 52GB Kali vm

    52 GB? What the hell are you running on that VM? usually 2 or 3 GB should be more than enough to run Kali.
    Still searching for the corner in a round room.
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  • Danielm7Danielm7 Member Posts: 2,310 ■■■■■■■■□□
    TechGromit wrote: »
    52 GB? What the hell are you running on that VM? usually 2 or 3 GB should be more than enough to run Kali.
    Disk usage, not memory.
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  • wrickazwrickaz Member Posts: 11 ■□□□□□□□□□
    During class there always might be some problems with compatibility and just maybe saying to bring windows os laptop might save time during classes with setup
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