Ground Floor-Hardware and Hypervisors

Every home lab begins with hardware. From a simple Raspberry Pi to a full rack of enterprise gear, it all depends on your goals and budget. Here at Larry’s laptop labs, as the name implies, we are going to be using a laptop.

Why Choose a Laptop?

The main factor for me was portability. The ability to test an idea at home or traveling and then be able to provide a working demonstration was a big attraction for me. The second consideration for me was the scope of the projects I plan to work on. My goals are to learn more about open source software and Cyber security. Currently a laptop fits my needs and budget.

I will be using a Lenovo ideapad 700-15ISK. This laptop is budget friendly, while providing enough resources to run a few virtual machines (VMs).

The next important decision is to choose a hypervisor. I plan to use a type 2 hypervisor also known as hosted hypervisor. This requires a host operating system to run the software. Some options include, Microsoft’s hyper-V, Virtualbox, and Vmware’s workstation. Microsoft hyper-V is included with Windows 10 pro, enterprise and education versions. Virtualbox is a free open source solution available for Windows, Linux and Mac. Vmware workstation is a paid product offering from vmware. My homelab laptop often is used for training classes that typically require the use of Vmware. I’ll be using vmware workstation pro for my homelab.

now that the selection of hardware and hypervisor is complete, on to the fun stuff, the lab setup.