Installing Your First Lab

Overview

Getting your first virtual machine up and running is simpler than most people expect. This lesson walks through the core steps: installing your hypervisor, downloading a VM image, and booting into your first lab environment.

Step 1 — Install Your Hypervisor

Download and install VirtualBox from virtualbox.org (free) or VMware Workstation Player from vmware.com (free for personal use). Both have straightforward installers. On Windows, accept the default settings. On Linux, follow the distribution-specific installation instructions in the documentation.

Step 2 — Get Your VM Images

For offensive work, start with Kali Linux. Download the pre-built VirtualBox or VMware image directly from kali.org/get-kali — this saves you the configuration step of a fresh install. For your target machine, download the Ubuntu Server ISO from ubuntu.com. For a realistic Windows target, Microsoft provides evaluation ISOs at microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter.

Step 3 — Create and Boot Your First VM

In VirtualBox, click New, name your VM, select the OS type and version, allocate at least 2GB of RAM, and create a virtual hard disk (25GB minimum for Kali, 20GB for Ubuntu). Point the VM to your downloaded ISO or pre-built image file, then click Start. The first boot will complete the OS installation.

Network Configuration

Set your VMs to use a Host-Only network adapter. This creates an isolated network between your VMs that cannot reach the internet — which is exactly what you want for a practice environment where you will be running attack tools. Your host machine can still reach the internet normally.

Key Takeaways

Once Kali and Ubuntu are running on the same Host-Only network, you have a functional attack and target pair. Everything that comes next — scanning, exploitation, post-exploitation, log analysis — runs on this foundation.

Part of the free Intro to Cyber course by Cover6 Solutions.