Build for network lab hacking

[centurion5]

Hello everyone, I'm new here. I'm currently in the process of putting together a lab (offline) and I need some input on a suitable computer build to launch my tests. My target machines are an old p4 (xp,win7,ubuntu) and an athlon xp machine (xp,ubuntu).

I'm new to this entire field but as I understand its best to keep all of these machines off the internet and my main network because things can get out of hand quickly, correct? If so then I would need to build another machine. Does anyone with experience in this field know what sort of system requirements I'll need?

My budget is as low as possible but of course I can adjust it if necessary. My only requirement is that whatever the build is, it must be m-itx because I already have a sg05 case & psu. I won't be playing any games on this and all I care about in terms of graphical performance is that it runs my operating systems well. I'd also like the ability to upgrade it in a year or two if necessary (mainly the cpu).

Thanks for any input.

ps I'm not sure if this belongs in general hardware or security :s

 

[mfenn]

Are you going to have any sort of higher-end networking gear to play with (Cisco switches, etc?) If not, I would recommend building a virtual lab using VirtualBox, VMware Workstation, etc. You can create as many internal-only switches as you want with either of those packages to create an arbitrary network topology.

 

[centurion5]

I wont have access to a switch or any other hardware really other than a spare router. I can if necessary pick up something off of ebay but I'm not sure what to look for, or if its worth it for a complete noob as myself. Lets say I were to go down the virtuialization route, what would be a good build? Just looking over system requirements it doesn't look like it takes much to run that software. In terms of processing power would something like a celeron cpu suffice?

 

[mfenn]

The only "hard" requirement for a virtualization build is a CPU with hardware virtualization extensions, which means a at least a Pentium G620 on the Intel side or an Athlon II X2 on the AMD side. Given the difference in performance, I would highly recommend the Intel.

Beyond that, CPU cores, memory, disk capacity/performance, and networking should scale with the number and type of VMs that you want to run and how much you're willing to spend. A Pentium G620 with 4GB of RAM will run lots of Linux VMs with text only consoles, but only a couple of Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2 VMs.