My Virtual Machine Lab

     All over the internet I've read or seen posts that state the best way to get IT experience is to build your own home lab. There are a multitude of ways to go about this. As I did my research, I found that the best way for me to have a home lab is to create a virtual machine (VM). The advantage to having a virtual machine home lab is the cost is a lot lower. You don't have to buy switches or cords or have multiple computers. Another advantage is you save a lot of physical space. You can do everything from one computer. If you want to learn more about what a home lab is, I suggest this video from IT Career Questions What is a HomeLab? How can you build your own and why it's useful! - YouTube.  

    My first thought was to set up virtual machines on AWS. AWS is Amazon web services. They have something called AWS free tier where you get one free year of AWS with 750 hours a month. This was the first route I took, but it did not take long before I got an email that said I was close to exceeding my limit. I realized that you barely have enough time to run one VM for one month. I wanted to be able to keep my VMs and try multiple operating systems (OS), so I decided that AWS free tier was not going to work for me. If you want to try AWS free tier yourself, I recommend watching this video How To Create a Virtual Machine in AWS Cloud | What is the Best Computer For Cybersecurity? | - YouTube by Nicole Enesse and this video YouTube by Jon Good. I found both videos helpful. The best part about working with AWS free tier was I was able to set up multi-factor authentication with an app called Duo Mobile, where the app sends you a new passcode to log into your AWS user accounts every thirty seconds.  

    I decided that I would set up VMs on a hypervisor on a computer that I owned. I looked on the internet and found that if you are going to run VM software, you want a computer with 16GB of RAM, lots of storage space on a SSD, and a powerful CPU like Intel i5 3.0 GHz core. I was able to fill all of these requirements in the Lenovo ThinkStation P330 Desktop PC. It has an Intel i7-8700 with 4.6GHz, 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and comes with Windows 10 Pro. It is a refurbished computer so it runs pretty cheap, around $400.00, which is a lot better than buying a brand new Dell computer for $1000.00 plus. The only catch is this computer is not always available. You basically have to watch Amazon until it becomes available and then snatch it before someone else can. I've included a link to the computer here https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08F2WG57N?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title. Just a few notes if you do decide to get this computer: You will have to buy a mouse, keyboard, and monitor for it. You can get these pretty cheap if you don't already have them lying around. Also, the computer did not have a HDMI port, but do not buy a display port to HDMI cord. The computer comes with a small converter. I have included pictures of the converter below. 

    Once I had the computer set up, I needed to enable Hyper-V. This is pretty simple. You just right click on the Windows button and click "Apps and Features". Then select Programs and Features, then "Turn Windows Feature on or off". Make sure Hyper-V is selected and click OK. Now Hyper-V is running on your computer. So far, I've only downloaded and created a VM for Linux Ubuntu because that is the only OS that I do not have much experience with. I found the video Install Ubuntu in Hyper V on Windows 10 Step by Step Guide - YouTube by AA notes pretty useful. So far I've really enjoyed the computer and I think Hyper-V is relatively easy to use. I might try out VMware depending on how Hyper-V works out. Either way, I'm super excited to get hands on with VMs, Linux, and whatever else I manage to do on this computer.