Lab 6 – Virtual Machines

In the previous lab, virtual appliances were deployed on a hosted hypervisor and verified to be workin" rel="nofollow">ing properly. A virtual appliance is useful because it is preconfigured when deployed, savin" rel="nofollow">ing the user time and sometimes complicated setup tasks. The operatin" rel="nofollow">ing system and any needed applications are typically in" rel="nofollow">installed with an easy way to perform in" rel="nofollow">initial configuration tasks. Often after the in" rel="nofollow">initial network configuration a virtual appliance is then managed, monitored, and accessed through a web configuration portal.In this lab, students will build a complete virtual machin" rel="nofollow">ine from the ground up. Usin" rel="nofollow">ing a hosted hypervisor (VMware Workstation, VMware Fusion, Sun Virtualbox, etc…) in" rel="nofollow">install an operatin" rel="nofollow">ing system in" rel="nofollow">in a new virtual machin" rel="nofollow">ine. The selection of the operatin" rel="nofollow">ing system is the choice of the student, however, it might be advantageous to select an OS with low resource requirements. There are several distributions of Lin" rel="nofollow">inux that are advertised to have lower hardware requirements and might be a good solution. The in" rel="nofollow">initial in" rel="nofollow">installation of the operatin" rel="nofollow">ing system of the virtual machin" rel="nofollow">ine will typically begin" rel="nofollow">in with an ISO image file of an OS in" rel="nofollow">installation disc. An ISO file can be burned to a bootable CD, DVD, flash drive or be mounted directly in" rel="nofollow">in an OS or with special drive emulator tools. When creatin" rel="nofollow">ing a virtual machin" rel="nofollow">ine, the in" rel="nofollow">initial hardware configuration should in" rel="nofollow">include the OS in" rel="nofollow">install ISO as the virtual CD-ROM drive for the VM. Most of the more recent hosted hypervisors have a useful feature that can determin" rel="nofollow">ine the operatin" rel="nofollow">ing system bein" rel="nofollow">ing in" rel="nofollow">installed once the ISO is selected and then properly configure the virtual hardware settin" rel="nofollow">ings based on OS hardware specifications. Some hypervisors will require the use manually specify virtual hardware to allocate to the VM in" rel="nofollow">includin" rel="nofollow">ing CPUs, RAM, hard disk, etc… Once the virtual machin" rel="nofollow">ine settin" rel="nofollow">ings are selected powerin" rel="nofollow">ing on the virtual machin" rel="nofollow">ine should start the VM bootin" rel="nofollow">ing from the OS in" rel="nofollow">install ISO. OS in" rel="nofollow">installation should then proceed as on a physical machin" rel="nofollow">ine. 1. What OS was chosen and why was it selected? What are the min" rel="nofollow">inimal required hardware specifications? Provide a lin" rel="nofollow">ink to a web page that in" rel="nofollow">indicates these specifications. 2. Provide a screenshot showin" rel="nofollow">ing the virtual machin" rel="nofollow">ine’s provisioned virtual hardware. 3. Provide screenshots showin" rel="nofollow">ing the steps required to create the virtual machin" rel="nofollow">ine. It is not necessary to show operatin" rel="nofollow">ing system in" rel="nofollow">installation steps. 4. Provide a screenshot showin" rel="nofollow">ing the virtual machin" rel="nofollow">ine after operatin" rel="nofollow">ing system in" rel="nofollow">installation was successful. 5. Virtual machin" rel="nofollow">ines on hosted hypervisors can typically be configured with network adapters that are associated with one of several “modes”: bridged, NAT, and host only are three examples commonly used in" rel="nofollow">in VMware hosted hypervisors. Briefly describe each of these three NIC configuration modes. 6. From the base OS in" rel="nofollow">installation that is complete, a virtual appliance could be created by in" rel="nofollow">installin" rel="nofollow">ing selected applications, performin" rel="nofollow">ing desired configurations, and then exported to an OVA or OVF. Export the created VM to an OVA or OVF, whichever the hypervisor supports. Show a screenshot of the host OS’s file manager with the filename and full details displayed of the exported VM. 7. Deploy the exported VM in" rel="nofollow">into the hosted hypervisor. This effectively will create a duplicate virtual machin" rel="nofollow">ine of the one that was just built durin" rel="nofollow">ing this lab. Show a screenshot of the MAC addresses bein" rel="nofollow">ing displayed within" rel="nofollow">in both VMs. Are they the same or are they unique? Why?