Building my Security Lab using VMWare or Virtual PC

Hi all,

i`m looking at building my own security lab at home for testing and general playing about with exploits and learning a bit more about security. I know epople say have a good mix of OS's and have a few boxes, but thing is I live in a dolls house and dont have the room for 1 PC let alone 2 or 3. So I was thinking of using something like VMWare or virtual PC and build my lab inside my Laptop. I`d need to buy a new laptop as I only have a D505 at the moment which is a tad weady.

Just wanted to know how feasable this was? and if so what kinda spec should the laptop be, my thoughts were dual core at least with at least 2 GB RAM. anyone else have any comments?

Thanx

Yeah.. Get even more memory... Running a virtual machine eats up memory like nothing else. More memory means being able to run more VMs at the same time.

So I suggest getting 4GB and a 64bit OS. The 64bit (host) OS will not only allow you to run 'regular' i386 guests but also 64bit guests.

forgive me for sounding thick but can I run a 64bit OS on a laptop with a 32 bit processor or is it just gonna think im having a laugh!!!

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Originally Posted by phobophiliac

forgive me for sounding thick but can I run a 64bit OS on a laptop with a 32 bit processor

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Nope, can't be done. A core2dual is EM64T, so it's a 64bit processor. Just make sure you get the 64bit version of Vista or XP.

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Originally Posted by SirDice

So I suggest getting 4GB and a 64bit OS. The 64bit (host) OS will not only allow you to run 'regular' i386 guests but also 64bit guests.

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Interesting thing about this... You no longer need a x64 host in order to run x64 guests.. You did in the era of VMWare Workstation 5.x but with 6.x you can run x64 guests on a x86 host (assuming you have a x64 processor)


phobophiliac: I would highly recommend VMWare Server 2.0. Consider it to be the "God" of all things vmware and remote.

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Originally Posted by HTRegz

Interesting thing about this... You no longer need a x64 host in order to run x64 guests.. You did in the era of VMWare Workstation 5.x but with 6.x you can run x64 guests on a x86 host (assuming you have a x64 processor)

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Yeah.. You're right.. From the vmware server faq:

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What does 64-bit operating system support mean?

It means that 64-bit guest operating systems will run on supported 64-bit hardware independent of the type of host operating system.

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This didn't used to be the case.

But you're going to need a 64bit host OS anyway if you want to make full use of 4GB (or more) :D

I dont think a d505 takes up to anywhere near 4gb though :-P I'd def. check out vmware desktop though..

He's planning on buying a new laptop ;)

My HP/Compaq 6510 is quite capable of handling 4GB.