Introduction

This lab environment will be build solely on virtual machines, without purchasing any extra equipment. I wanted to create something that is 1) easy to start, 2) accessible to all. This is especially so when one of the more feature-rich virtual machine hypervisors, VMWare Workstation Pro, is now available for free (as of 22 June 2024)!

Hardware requirements

I will be running the lab environment with my PC. The specs are as follows:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X (6 cores, 12 threads)

• RAM: 2 x 16GB 3200MHz

• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060

• HDD: 512GB SSD + 2TB HDD

• OS: Windows 11 Pro

Tools

This is a list of tools we will use:

• VMWare Workstation