I’m leaving Cisco Advanced Services in a week, and I’ll be starting a new job with the Cisco Customer Engagement Center of Excellence (Formerly Proof of Value Services). This organization includes CPOC and dCloud, and so it’s time I retreaded very old ground and started re-learning things like VMWare administration and Linux. Tonight, I started looking for the best way to spin up on Linux as a whole and picked a distro to play with, Ubuntu.
I started at the Linux Foundation looking for resources on how to start re-learning Linux. I found this video to get started, and downloaded Ubuntu Desktop 18.0.4 to play with. I use VMware Workstation Player for EVE-NG as well as GNS3, so I just built a new virtual machine using the recommended specs. I mounted the Ubuntu ISO file in the VM and booted it up. Immediately, the Ubuntu installer started and began installing. After setting up some small details like user account, I was done. I used NAT on VMWare Player to allow the VM to reach the internet for the next part.
Next, I wanted to install a few packages. I did a little Googling for a traffic generator and found hping3. It’s a pen testing tool and also a traffic generator, so I downloaded and installed the package. I had to refer to the man page to figure out how to send some traffic, but in a bit I was sending TCP SYN packets to the VM NIC gateway (my host PC) just as a test.
I also downloaded the standard net-tools and other network diagnostic packages which aren’t installed by default.
At this point, without an actual goal beyond ‘learn Linux again’, I called it good and started looking for some documentation now that I had a playground.
I ended up paying $0.99 for The Ubuntu Beginner’s Guide – Eleventh Edition (Updated for 18.04) in order to brush up on the basics. So far, so good. I’m reading that now. It’s a little basic even for me, but I did buy a Beginner’s Guide after all. I think I’ll work on trying to play around with it more after I finish reading the book.
I also spent time re-learning some VMWare. I used to build the M/C200 UCS for my old job where they came preloaded with ESXI and Collab VMs like UCM, Unity and UCCX. I also built and deployed virtual network appliances like ACS and FTD, so I was familiar with VMWare but it’s been a while.
I headed over to VMWare’s Hands-On-Lab website and did the “HOL-1810-01-SDC – Virtualization 101: Introduction to vSphere” lab which did a great refresher on how to build, deploy and edit VM settings. I was surprised by how much I had remembered, but I’ll need to dig farther into the vSwitch at some point once I can find the right labs.
What do people recommend for someone like me looking to re-learn Linux and VMware? I’m not sure yet to what level I’ll need to go for either, but I know that at very least I’ll be using both.
