Lab Environment Setup

This is the first of many posts regarding my lab environment. This lab will be used primarily for general information security research, and all other stuff I would want to play around with.

Allocated hardware:

• CyberPower OR700LCDRM1U Smart App LCD UPS SNMP/HTTP Rackmount
  • Capacity: 700 VA / 400 W
  • Output: 120 VAC ± 10%
  • Outlets: 6 × NEMA 5-15R

• WD Blue 1TB SATA 3.5 Inch Desktop Hard Drive (WD10EZEX)
  • 6 Gb/s 7200 RPM
  • 64MB Cache

• Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 70A4000HUX
  • Intel Core i3-4130 processor 3.4 GHz, 2C, 4M Cache, 1.00 GT/s, 65W
  • 1 x 4 GB PC3-12800E 1600MHz DDR3 ECC
    
  • Added two modules of Crucial 4GB Single DDR3 1600 MT/s (PC3-12800) to bring total RAM up to 12GB
  • Inserted the WD10EZEX 1TB HD to serve as the VM storage (for now)

• Cisco SG200-08P 8-port (4 Reg + 4 PoE) Gigabit PoE Smart Switch (SLM2008PT-NA)
  • 802.1Q VLAN support
  • 4 PoE ports allocated

Now that I have dedicated hardware, I need to setup a type-1 Hypervisor. I’m already used to Hyper-V (very fond of PS management), and there’s a lot of limitations for the free version of VMware vSphere, so I opted to use XenServer. I’ve always had an interest in XS, it has a great web client with Xen Orchestra (XO), and has no “free” limitations seeing as it is FOSS.

So I pulled down the XS 7 installation ISO and started getting ready for my install.