🖥️ Building a Portable VM Lab for DevOps & Pentesting
I wanted a clean, reproducible way to spin up both DevOps and pentesting environments without constantly reinstalling tools or breaking my main system. So I built VM Lab — a Vagrant-based setup that runs on VMware (Fusion on Mac or Workstation on Windows) and gives me ready-to-use environments in minutes.
Why I built this
Setting up environments manually is slow and inconsistent. One machine has Docker issues, another is missing dependencies, and suddenly you’re debugging setup instead of actually learning or building.
This project solves that by:
Automating environment provisioning
Keeping setups consistent across machines
Letting me destroy and recreate labs instantly
What’s inside
Ubuntu DevOps VM
A full DevOps playground with everything I need preinstalled:
Docker, Kubernetes (kind), Helm
Terraform, Ansible, ArgoCD
AWS CLI, gcloud
VS Code + GUI (GNOME)
Runs on:
8GB RAM, 4 vCPU
Static IP:
192.168.56.10
Kali Linux Pentest VM
A focused environment for security testing and research:
Nmap, Metasploit, Burp Suite
OWASP ZAP, Wireshark
Recon tools like Amass & Subfinder
Password cracking tools (Hydra, John, Hashcat)
Runs on:
6GB RAM, 3 vCPU
Static IP:
192.168.56.20
Quick workflow
Spin up a VM:
VM_TYPE=ubuntu vagrant up
Export it to VMware:
./scripts/export-vm.sh ubuntu
Open and use it like a normal VM:
open ~/VMware-Labs/ubuntu-vm/ubuntu-24.04-aarch64.vmx
Destroy and reset anytime:
vagrant destroy
Why this is useful
For learning DevOps → instantly test tools like Kubernetes, Terraform, and CI/CD setups
For pentesting practice → isolated environment with all essential tools ready
For consistency → same setup every time, no “works on my machine” issues
Final thoughts
This is basically my personal lab in a box. I can spin it up, break things, experiment, and reset everything in minutes. No more wasted time on setup — just focus on actually learning and building.
Next step: expanding this with multi-node clusters and automated scenarios.
