Lab 1 - Setting Up Your Environment

In this lab, you will focus on setting up your environment which includes two virtual machines (VMs) that you will use throughout the rest of the semester. Be sure to follow the instructions carefully, and use the internet to clarify or look up information you do not know. Please don't hesitate to ask me questions as well! Each stage represents one part of the lab. Please be sure to show me that you're completion of each stage in order to get checked off for that part of the lab.

Expected Outcomes

Ubuntu server and OPNSense are installed and running
Ubuntu is layered behind OPNSense from the "external" network
SSH is configured on your Ubuntu machine and accessible from outside OPNSense

Stage 1 - Accessing Proxmox

You will be hosting your virtual machines (VMs) on the School of Computing servers using a virtualization management software called Proxmox. Logging into Proxmox requires a CS account, which you should have verified access to back in Lab 1. If you do not yet have a CS account, please let me know.

Proxmox is accessible at the following URL: https://10.10.129.101:8006

In order to access the above URL, you must either use one of the computers in the lab, or have your personal device be connected to the School of Computing VPN.

Once you visit the Proxmox URL, you should be presented with the above screen. Your username will be your Southern.edu username without the @southern.edu portion at the end, and the password will be the password you set when first logging into the CS account. Please make sure that the realm is set to cs, and not one of the other options.

Stage 2 - Creating your OPNSense VM

In this stage, you'll create the OPNSense VM. This machine will act as the "router" for your future private network you'll be setting up later on in the lab. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click Create VM on the top right of the page in Proxmox

2. Next, you should see the following box appear:

Set the Name field to cptr254-opnsense-cs_account_username
- For example, if your logged into Proxmox with the username bobbyb, the server name would be cptr254-opnsense-bobbyb
Set the Resource Pool to the pool matching your Southern username. Let me know if you do not appear to have one.
Leave the rest of the fields as they are, and click next

3. Next, on the next page, you should be presented with the following options:

Set the Storage field to CIFS-DB
Set ISO Image to OPNsense-23.7-dvd-amd64.iso
Leave the rest of the settings as is

4. Leave all settings on the System tab at default

5. On the Disks tab, set Storage to SSD and leave the rest as is

6. Under the CPU tab, set Cores to 2

7. Leave all settings on the Memory tab at default

8. On the Network tab, please refer to the VLAN assignments, and do the following:

Set the Bridge to vmbr1
Set the VLAN Tag to 14
Leave the rest as is

9. Click next, verify all the settings match the specifications provided here, and click finish

In the event that you get an error referencing that your VM ID is already in use, navigate back to the General tab, and increment the VM ID field up until the box no longer has a red outline around it.
Next, navigate back to the Confirm tab and click finish
Your OPNsense VM should now successfully be provisioned
If it is not successfully created, let me know

Stage 2 - Creating your Ubuntu VM

In this section, you will go through the same steps as Stage 1, except specified for a Ubuntu VM.

1. Click Create VM once again

2. On the General tab, do the following:

Set the Name field to cptr254-ubuntu-cs_account_username
Set the Resource Pool field to the one with your CS account username
Leave the rest as is and click next

3. On the Storage tab, do the following:

Set the Storage field to CIFS-DB
Set ISO Image to ubuntu-24.04-live-server-amd64.iso
Leave the rest of the settings as is