From the course: Protecting Your Network with Open Source Software

Set up environment

From the course: Protecting Your Network with Open Source Software

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Set up environment

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- [Instructor] Deploying virtual machines or VMs in an Azure environment is relatively straightforward and out of scope for this course. However, there are some subtle things you need to keep in mind to avoid potential dead ends. In this course, I set up remote desktops for both windows and Ubuntu VMs. The Ubuntu VMs use the server version of the operating system or OS which doesn't provide graphical user interface or GUI by default. To enable remote desktop access, I had to install additional software including the XFCE for desktop environment. You can find step-by-step instructions on this website. Activating file rules on Ubuntu VMs can lead to losing a remote desktop connection. If that happens, don't panic, you still have console access. Click on the serial console option. I also had to create a virtual sub-net called DMZ who's subnet ID is 10.0.1.0/24. In addition to the default subnet 10.0.0.0/24. Another thing I had to do was to enable forwarding on each virtual network interface card as shown here. Also, I added a new route table to explicitly direct all the packets going from 10.0.1.0/24 to the default subnet 10.0.0.0/24. To our gateway interface, 10.0.1.4 on the Ubuntu router host. You can see my route setting here. This that may not be necessary if you're using different cloud platforms, such as VMware or proxmox. Whenever you restart your Ubuntu router VM, the forwarding option is disabled by default. Therefore you need to enable forwarding each time by issuing the command echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward. If you don't want to use a cloud to try out the hands-on exercises, you can download proxmox which allows you to install VMs on a local machine. Oracle VirtualBox is another such solution. That's it. Although there may be challenges while setting up your own VM environment, it's worth the trouble. Trying out what I demonstrate throughout this course will make the concept sink in and allow you to develop a deeper understanding.

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