This week I’ll be brief. No pictures to go with this, because the gear is hand me down desktop stuff, but I’ll share some resource links for the software.
One component of this lab is a virtual machine server that I use to spin up VMs for various things. Mine is currently just an old Alienware desktop I got from my cousin when he was cleaning house a year or two ago. It doesn’t have much, and the setup isn’t ideal, because it’s just one machine, not a cluster for high availability, but it works for a lab environment.
The host software I use is called “Proxmox” which is a debian based Linux distribution that borrows a kernel from RedHat land for some of the capabilities it offers. It’s basically a pretty web based front end to KVM, built in. The interface isn’t too far different from VMware’s VSphere interface, but that’s a simplified comparison, really.
A friend from my old place of employment introduced me to Proxmox, and while I was researching the software online, I came across a book on it. If you already have a hypervisor available, great. Use what you know. However, if you’re looking for an easy to manage hypervisor, because workstation virtual environments like VirtualBox just aren’t cutting it any more, this is a good one to pick up. I highly recommend it. It does have a free version, and it will nag you about not having a subscription, but it’s a minor annoyance in my opinion.
The software can be found here.
The book I mentioned can be found here.
The second edition of that book (which I don’t own yet) is here.