Building a test lab

So, although I don't know much at this stage I do know that I will need access to a test environment so I can practice using tools and breaking into systems. I can't really practice on my existing home PC (wife wouldn't be happy about this as she uses it for work!) or on the network at work (production systems, possible legal issues there too) so I decided I would need to build my own virtual environment.

A family member recently replaced their PC with a laptop and they were going to skip the old PC. Its only a Dell Inspiron 531 1GB of memory but it has a 64 bit AMD processor and I thought it would be enough to get me going. Wrong! Tried installing VMWare vSphere 4 but it repeatedly failed with some very strange error messages. A quick google search shows that the error is probably due to the on board NIC not being compatible. I could order a new NIC for it but I really didn't want to waste any money on such an old machine especially if I wasn't 100% sure it would fix my problem.

So I started looking around work for some spare hardware to borrow. After a quick chat with the man in the know and a brief search we managed to locate a Dell Optiplex 745 that was surplus to requirements. It has a dual core Intel 1.86Ghz CPU with 2GB of RAM and a couple of fairly large hard disks. Perfect! VMWare installed no problems and I was up and running.

Now I should point out at this point that the Optiplex is at the office, I have not stolen anything! The machine will have work related uses as well as what I have planned for it. There is an existing test lab at work but the server boys are a tad protective over it so it will be much better to have a lab of my own.

So I have VMWare up and running and to appease her indoors I am going to dispose of the Inspiron. I have enough computers lying around the house as it is apparently (how is that possible?). I have removed the hard disk and the memory and installed it in the Optiplex. The hard disk will be used to store ISO images so as not to impeach on the main OS storage drive.

Now to acquire some operating systems....