Develop, Build, and Test a Virtual Lab to Support a Vulnerability Training System

A computer security virtual lab architecture was developed and tested for functionality and performance. Four Dell PowerEdge 1650, dual processor, blade servers were configured as host machines with VMware and VNC running on a Linux RedHat 9 Kernel. An Apache-Tomcat web server was configured as the external interface to lab users. Web content was created, the site was secured with SSL, and Java Servlet functionality was enabled. Host machine performance was tested under various load conditions. Analysis indicated that, for our architecture, that the average host machine CPU load was ~12 % while the average memory load was ~33 %. We conclude that for the cost and space requirements of 5 1U blade servers we have configured an equivalent 20 computer lab. Performance tests show that the virtual lab could scale easily from 4 – 30 computers.