Online virtual network environment for students

[swpmre]

Hi all,

Apologies if this is the wrong forum, please redirect me if required.

I've been set a slightly complex challenge. Our Adult Education college wants to offer courses in "ethical hacking", network security and the like. SLT would like to offer an learning environment were students can practice connecting to servers and doing tasks like "penetration testing" and security tests. Management's prefered option would be for me to set up a mini-network which they can get students to connect to, using dedicated laptops and practice connecting to servers etc. I would have to set up virtual servers for them to practice on in this network.

 

I am against this. It seems like an incredibly over-engineered setup, that would require lots of maintenance from a very small team. I am also concerned with the security implications. If the teaching network touches our own in any form it offers a route into our own network. So it would have to be completely physically separate, and that brings with it further problems of cost and space.

 

My alternative suggestion would be to have a setup like those used by training companies. For instance I think of QA.com with whom I did a course a few years back where we learnt on an entirely virtual network, were we could image/build virtual machines as required and delete/mess about in an environment that was entirely closed off from the outside world.

 

My problem is finding this alternative option - I don't even find anything when I search online, and I wonder if it uses some sort of Azure setup that I have no experience of. And I imagine there are prohibitive costs.

 

Any ideas? I'm getting huge pressure from SLT to setup some sort of jury rigged system that will bring chaos and loads of work!

Edited February 5, 2025 by swpmre

[NegativeKillDeath]

Have you looked at Azure Labs? Azure Lab Services

[3s-gtech]

It's either a case of working with Virtualbox (it can be done centrally on one host - but it's a beast on resources) or using Entra licensed VMs (Azure Labs mentioned above), which will be much less work but it's expensive.

 

Do they have a curriculum ready so you can see what fits best?

[Davit2005]

Hi all,

SLT would like to offer an learning environment were students can practice connecting to servers and doing tasks like "penetration testing" and security tests. Management's prefered option would be for me to set up a mini-network which they can get students to connect to, using dedicated laptops and practice connecting to servers etc.

 

I did the same at a previous employer and it was an ache. Building the physical desktops with OS, configuring network then you have to make sure that they don't connect the laptops to the wrong network etc. Some sort of virtual environment would be a whole lot better.

 

But I'd agree at looking at the curriculum for said course as a first step.

Edited February 5, 2025 by Davit2005

[ITGuyNW]

Have you looked at Azure Labs? Azure Lab Services

 

FYI

 

 

Azure Lab Services retirement guide - Azure Lab Services | Microsoft Learn

[swpmre]

ha! Just my luck.

[dhicks]

For instance I think of QA.com with whom I did a course a few years back where we learnt on an entirely virtual network, were we could image/build virtual machines as required and delete/mess about in an environment that was entirely closed off from the outside world. My problem is finding this alternative option - I don't even find anything when I search online, and I wonder if it uses some sort of Azure setup that I have no experience of. And I imagine there are prohibitive costs.

 

I agree, some kind of virtual machine setup is going to be easier to manage than anything involving dedicated laptops. We use a (free, open source) Guacamole server for our general web-based remote desktop provision, you could have a dedicated Guacamole remote gateway for users to log on to to connect to virtual machines. We have our Guacamole server behind a Cloudflare Zero-Trust gateway tunnel that takes care of authentication, which makes for one less thing to manage / worry about.

 

As these are virtual machines to be used for, hopefully, slightly more technical purposes, you probably don't need a Windows desktop, all your virtual desktops can probably be Linux desktops. Indeed, there are several distributions made for exactly this sort of thing, having a bunch of network analysis tools and so forth available, so that part of cost / licensing should be easy enough. If you already have on-site server provision (some kind of server room with power and aircon) then adding one more dedicated server shouldn't be that expensive - a second-hand server might cost, say, around £2,000. Whatever virtual machine system you use should let you provision and manage virtual switches, you should be able to put all the virtual desktops (and any test servers they're trying to break into) on their own dedicated virtual network and leave them to it.

[swpmre]

Thanks for this David. Would you mind if I sent you a PM to get a bit more info on your setup?

[PotNoodleTech]

It's got to be virtual, so that they can do literally anyrthing without endangering the rest of your network and you can flatten the image easily so they can start from scratch.

 

I wouldnt go with laptops TBH as they'll be trying to connect them to the WIFI and all sorts.

[dhicks]

Thanks for this David. Would you mind if I sent you a PM to get a bit more info on your setup?

 

Sure, no problem. I've put most of the setup I've used into a Github project:

 

https://github.com/dhicks6345789/remote-gateway

 

The above produces a web-accessible (Windows) remote desktop gateway server, we've been using that configuration for the past couple of years. It should be tweakable to fit other situations - maybe have a fresh virtual desktop created each login, for instance.