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Computer Specs:

Core 2 Duo 1.80Ghz

2gb ram

500GB hd

Currently with Windows XP installed but can be changed to anything else needed.


To explain more about what i am looking forward to do, i was planning to setup 3 enviroments on a VM as follow:

A) linux server

B) Windows XP client on network A

C) Windows Vista, XP or anyother system i may need to test as client on network B

So i would have 2 differents vlans that are connected to the linux server network that will manage those 2 clients.

Maybe I am overthinking or doing it the wrong way so let me tell more about what I have and what I want to do:

I have 2 computers available at my section, one that I can't spare and this one that I listed above that inst being used at all.

I want to learn more about iptables, samba, squid and other services so I would like a test enviroments where I can do all that without hurting anything else around so I can still go back to work after I played with this without having to worry if I screwed up something.

I tought that using this machine as a VM would allow me to do that.


Some questions:

  • Am I doing it the right way or are there better approchs ?

  • What is the best OS to install a VM and which VM should i use for this sort of thing ?

  • Learning iptables on a VM is harder then learning on normal setup (i meant the VM does a network on top of a network not sure how to explain it) ?

  • Do i need to make 3 enviroments having a main installation of any OS or could i use the linux server as the main OS and make the 2 enviroments on top of it (would this be harder to learn the firewalling aswell) ?

Thigs i was planning to try:

  • Samba as PDC
  • VPN
  • Squid alone and on top of a Samba PDC
  • iptables

i may be missing other features i will try but the these will give me plenty of work for some days i hope.

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  • Questions relating to professional education are off topic per the revised FAQ.
    – sysadmin1138
    Oct 10, 2012 at 21:50

1 Answer 1

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  • It's a good approach
  • The VM host is your choice as it will generally not affect the guest VMs
  • The guest VM's network will not know that its actually within a VM
  • Same as the last two bullets/answers, it generally doesn't matter (consider utilizing local/internal-only networking * no access to real network * or bridged networking - both will not have any possible added complexities of VM NAT)
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  • +1 thanks for your answer, about 2nd bullet inst there a OS that will give me a usage out of a VM other then using Windows XP as the host for example ? i guess that is what i meant... For some reason i don't see win xp as a potential host...
    – Guapo
    Oct 12, 2010 at 6:44
  • Practically all "desktop" (VirtualBox, VMware, Parallels, etc.) VMs support XP as a host OS option.
    – user48838
    Oct 12, 2010 at 6:48

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