Virtual machines\software

greg9891

What virtual machines or software are you guys running in your study lab, example plex server, sophos virtual firewall. I am curious to know because I just purchased a some parts for a ryzen study machine 3700x, 32gb ram, 1tb ssd(will expand later), asus tuf wifi motherboard. Let me know what you guys run in your Virtual environment. 

JDMurray

For people interested in this topic:

VirtualBox is probably the the most popular free VM hosting environment. I run VB on both Windows 10 and Ubuntu Linux 20. It's easy to work with and upgrade and I can't recall having problems with VB that forced me to use another VM hosting environment instead.

VMware Workststion Player and  VMware Workstation Pro are also very popular on both Windows and Linux, but are not free; both have a fully functional 30-day trial. It was once possible to buy Workstation on the VMware Website using an educational discount with no requirement of sending proof of enrollment to VMware. I do not know if that's still the case, but it seemed to be a good marketing move to spread the use of VMware Workstation. I gave up Workstation for VB because I didn't want to continue paying for each major upgrade to Workstation out of my own pocket.

As for the VMs being run, I'm in to the actual monitoring and logging programs (e.g., RITA, Splunk, Security Onion, Zeek, etc.) to see what they do and so I can talk intelligently about them. Practically anything that is distributed on a VM I'll give a shot in my Ryzen 9/32GB RAM/nVidia Ubuntu box. My one exception is Malware analysis environments. I prefer to use Cloud-based analysis, on sites like any.run, for "mystery files." I really need to get into in-memory Malware analysis; maybe in my next lifetime.

scott28tt

One correction to the post above - VMware Workstation Player is free for non-commercial use.

bigdogz

I used the earlier versions of VirtualBox and noticed it to be a bit buggy and taking quite a bit of RAM. It was around 4 years ago but I just found a better product with the VMWare workstation player. I use various distributions of Linux and Windows and I have not had any issues.

JDMurray

scott28tt said:

One correction to the post above - VMware Workstation Player is free for non-commercial use.

This fact is not obvious on the VMware Player 16 page or on the VMware Workstation Player download page or on the VMware Workstation Player Documentation page.

UPDATE: I installed Player 16 on my Ubuntu 20 and I see the "Use VMware Player 16 for free for non-commercial use" option. Talk about burying the lead!

yoba222

I've recently switched from using VirtualBox for a number of years to VMware Workstation Pro. VirtualBox was nice, but such a hassle when every time a Linux host had kernel updates or whenever VirtualBox had updates there was a 50% chance it would break guest additions functionality. With VMware, it just works. The UI of VMware kind of sucks in my opinion though.

scott28tt

JDMurray said:

scott28tt said:

One correction to the post above - VMware Workstation Player is free for non-commercial use.

This fact is not obvious on the VMware Player 16 page or on the VMware Workstation Player download page or on the VMware Workstation Player Documentation page.

UPDATE: I installed Player 16 on my Ubuntu 20 and I see the "Use VMware Player 16 for free for non-commercial use" option. Talk about burying the lead!

Agree that it’s not obvious, you are looking at the Store page where people go to buy products.

It is mentioned in the Compare section on the product page: https://www.vmware.com/uk/products/workstation-player.html

And on the same page for Workstation Pro: https://www.vmware.com/uk/products/workstation-pro.html

FluffyBunny

Basically I've built a small reproduction of an enterprise network in VMWare ESXi, which keeps growing over time

Here's the state by late 2020 -> https://www.kilala.nl/index.php?id=2491

greg9891

FluffyBunny said:

Basically I've built a small reproduction of an enterprise network in VMWare ESXi, which keeps growing over time

Here's the state by late 2020 -> https://www.kilala.nl/index.php?id=2491

I am also looking to get my CompTIA CTT + Soon also. Can you share what your journey is like, study methods and stuff. Thanks!

FluffyBunny

greg9891 said:

FluffyBunny said:

Basically I've built a small reproduction of an enterprise network in VMWare ESXi, which keeps growing over time

Here's the state by late 2020 -> https://www.kilala.nl/index.php?id=2491

I am also looking to get my CompTIA CTT + Soon also. Can you share what your journey is like, study methods and stuff. Thanks!

It's not really related to this thread, but okay

I didn't do much of anything special: I only read the one, big "golden" book for CTT+ that's available via O'Reilly Online. That's literally the only book I read. Made lots of notes while reading, to help with retention. That was enough to pass the theoretical exam. 

For the practical exam, I recorded a mini-training I taught colleagues, about a tech topic I needed to teach anyway. 

greg9891

Ok excellent, that's pretty cool. I also looked at your logical lay out of your virtual environment. That's a nice topology you got there.