Built Up a VM Server Over the Weekend

So my company has an e-recycling day coming up and my wife has been bugging me about getting rid of old computers and the like.  It turns out that after looking over everything I ended up with 6 towers left after removing hard drives and extracting parts for use later.  I also added a whole bunch of misc. motherboards and other obsolete equipment to the stack.  This will go out on Earth Day for e-recycling.

Which brings me to what I did over the weekend.  I built up a server using one remaining tower.  I populated it with a AMD FX 8320/motherboard/8 GB ram/1TB hard drive.  My objective was to build up a Server which I could use to host a number of VMs which would run continuously in my network.  I am also interested in setting up an Ethernet interface on the Server which would connect to a number of VLANs from my home network.  The VLANs would be routed to one or more of the VMs.  I hope to have an internal Hacking VLAN setup in this manner since I know that I can get vulnerable VMs from different sites on the internet.

To start this off, I was able to setup an Ubuntu 15.10 Server using my portable USB DVD drive from my Mac Mini.  I changed out the power supply and added a SATA based DVD drive and a SATA based removable hard drive.  I then installed KVM and attempted my first install of a VM from an ISO file.  That took a very long time.  So, I now know that if I can get the VM already made I should do so.

More info later.

Moved All Media Devices Outside of Internal Network

So, in my head I was thinking that one of the biggest issues with fiddling with my network has been the times in which something went wrong and my wife was complaining about the loss of TV.  This happened primarily because I was using the Managed Switches to connect the TiVo Bolt and Minis to the Quantum gateway.  I simply had those devices on a separate VLAN from my internal network.

However, if I blundered with some configuration that might cause a problem with the network I would sometimes have to reset the switches (probably to update the ARP tables) and that would disconnect the TV signal to the Minis for a short period of time.  I decided that what I would do was to put the Bolt, Minis, and the weather Raspberry Pi on a completely separate network connected to the Quantum gateway, bypassing all of the managed switches and router connections.  That way, if I decide to monkey around with the network it wont disturb the TV flow.  It will still affect the wi-fi signal but that is less of a problem.  I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier.  All it cost me was to make up a new cable to pass through a wall, add a switch, and run one long cable downstairs.  Everything is now connected by Ethernet directly to a gigabit switch below the Quantum gateway and then connected to the gateway via an Ethernet cable.  What I have noticed with this setup is that there is very little activity going through the Quantum gateway.  Most of the activity is absorbed by the gigabit switch.  So this was definitely a good choice for me.

Getting Back to the Blog

I have been noticeably absent from writing on this blog for some time.  I have been taking an online class for the ISSEP concentration for my CISSP security certification.  Now I am going to have some time to come back and attack some of these projects that have been put on the back burner.

Update: I was fortunate enough to have passed the ISSEP examination.  Now I have to go through the endorsement process with a new updated resume and a different outlook on life.  No more working on certifications for a while!

Project #10 - Move All Media Components Outside the Main Network

Having gone through a number of problems with the Main ActionTech router bogging down when updates are made, I have decided to move the Media components to an external unmanaged switch outside of the main vlan structure and just simply go through the router.

Updated Mac Mini to El Capitan - now the issues have started

I decided on the first of the week to update my Mac Mini (mid-2011) to the current OS X called El Capitan.  Up until this time I was using Mavericks and had all of my system setup and operating.  What I failed to remember was that when you update a Mac systems OS from one major version to another, it pretty much resets all of your information to a default.  For instance, I use SSH to tunnel into my home network while at work (to be changed to an IPSec VPN in the near future).  When I updated to the latest release, my Mac Mini was reset back to a DHCP setup with SSH turned off.  So I ended up having to reset my Mac Mini back to the internal IP that I normally use (and that the router is pointing to for open ports).  I also had to turn the SSH back on.

I was a little reluctant about changing the Server component of this system because I had heard some bad things about issues and problems.  So far the update (which cost me all of $20) has been fairly smooth, I haven't seen any real hiccups - this too may change.  I did notice that all of the VLAN setups coming into the Mac Mini have all disappeared and I will now have to reconfigure them.  That is okay, since I was intent on re-doing them anyway.  I was somewhat surprised to find my wireless turned on.  That has been dealt with.

This morning I was able to ssh into the Mac Mini from work and so far all is well.