Milestone Bare Metal 1 ‐ ESXi Setup - Jacob-Mayotte/SYS480 GitHub Wiki

Welcome to the SYS480 wiki!

Goal of the assignment:

💡You have been assigned your own physical server, located in a fully functional but tiny data center in Joyce. You will be assigned either the odd or even rack depending on your section. Your job will be to access and install ESXi 8x on this server and deploy basic services such as networking, firewall and a management virtual machine.

Install Steps:

  1. Connected to the IPMI address: 192.168.7.66 via google
  2. Plugged-in USB with ESXI installed into my server (24) actual hardware here!
  3. Was able to return to my server virtually: Note credentials were obtained from an email that I received.

image

  1. Reset the server from the GUI

image

  1. Navigated to Remote Control and selected: iKVM/HTML5

image

  1. Enter the KVM shell, and select the USB, which has ESXi & Rufus installations.
  2. I went through the install and let it download (f11 while the system boots up will enter the boot menu):

image

  1. select UEFI Drive, the installer will load, scan for the largest drive available, and select, ATA as the drive to improve // set a password you will remember!
  2. Skipped through the error/accepted it
  3. Selected install which prompted a new installation:

image

  1. Expected: Can connect through: 192.168.7.66

image

(Must set the IP's and move the ethernet cable to a new interface)

Configuration Steps // Accessing the ESXi web interface:

  1. Reboot the machine after removing the boot media (USB), press f2 & use the credentials that were set during the install! username will be root
  2. Meander into Configure mgmt network, then network adapters, should see:

image

  1. De-select the vmnic0 adapter (space bar) & select the connected adapter, vmnic1:

image

  1. Press enter (this is: ok) then press escape, then y to restart the network. Expected results:

image

  1. Unplug the IPMI interface if you want.

  2. Now reenter Configure mgmt network & DNS config and select the following:

image

  1. Now reenter Configure mgmt network & IPv4 Config then set it staticly using the ESXi address: 192.168.7.34 this is assigned in the network assignments!

image

  1. Expected results:

image

  1. Navigate to the static ESXi interface now:

image

!!! Use the creds that we set, username: root

Remove the IPMI interface connection & Configure any secondary datastores available

  • To be honest I didn't remove the IPMI interface after hearing peers say they as well did not. I also did not see this done in any of the videos.
  • I did not have any secondary datastores available:

image

ISOs Pulled and Database config:

  • Selected datastore, then went to actions, change the name to: datastore1-super24

image

  • Note: Created a directory named: isos

  • Okay to retrieve the ISOs is easy... depending on location:

  1. If in the lab, you can simply press upload from the ESXi interface under storage, then navigate to the following file path and select the pfSense and Xubuntu ISOs to upload:

image

  1. If you are at home, connect via viewportal to Champlain's network, then using the following spreadsheet to find a Joyce PC to RDP into.

FINALLY, it should look like this:

image

Networking Config + Creating a virtual 480-WAN:

  1. Select Networking on the ESXi interface, virtual switch --> then press: Add a standard virtual switch:
  • Delete the uplink, VYOS FW will deal w that as Devin said. IN OUR CASE IT IS GOING TO BE PFSENSE!
  • Rename to: 480-WAN
  1. Create Port Group: Under Networking, go to port groups and add a new port group with the following config:

image

image

Creating + Configuring 480-fw:

  • Via ESXi interface navigate to Virtual Machines then press: Create / Register a new VM'
  • The New Virtual Machine wizard should populate the screen. The following is my config:
Select a name and guest OS:

image

Select Storage:

image

Customize Settings:
  • PRESS: Add Network Adapter once, nothing will really happen but do it, then make the following changes:

image

image

Select the pFsense ISO we downloaded earlier!

image

pFSense installer:
  • Start our new VM we just made and let it boot. Go through the pfSense installer, select UFS, then entire disk, and lastly select finish, then reboot the machine
  • No to vlans.
  • Make the interfaces the following w/ addresses:

image

  • We will finish this later once xubuntu mgmt is configured because the web version of pFsense is amazing!

Creating + Configuring 480-WAN xubuntu VM:

  • Via ESXi interface navigate to Virtual Machines then press: Create / Register a new VM'
  • The New Virtual Machine wizard should populate the screen. The following is my config:

image

  • Select thin provision!
xubuntu Install:
  • For this install, I just did the minimal version. I erased the disk then installed + created a account.
  • Once on the computer I navigated to canvas and ran a wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gmcyber/RangeControl/main/src/scripts/base-vms/ubuntu-desktop.sh the xubuntu Script that was provided - to run the script navigate to its location and: ./filename
  • Before running the script though navigate to the web version of pFsense: https://10.0.17.2/
  • Go through the setup wizard, ideally your config will look something like this:

image

Note! This script does download remote chrome desktop. Once the computer is configured set this up.

  • I then shut the machine down and changed the adapter to 480-WAN if it is not on this adapter already

image

  • Once I started the VM I changed the hostname: hostnamectl set-hostname xubuntu-mgmt

image

  • Then I edited the wired connection:

image

  • Note the search domain is what you set it on your fw.

Deliverables:

  • Tracepath:

image

  • IP Config:

image

  • Successful browse to champlain:

image