The first step in creating my test lab is to set up a virtual environment. As mentioned in a prior blog, I am using VirtualBox. The following is from their website (www.virtualbox.com):
VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. See “About VirtualBox” for an introduction.
My host machine is running Windows 7, so I downloaded the appropriate installer from their site and then launched it. The downloads page is https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads.
The install is pretty much a next, next next install. You will breifly loose network connectivity, and you will recieve warnings about installing the USB emulator, virtual network adapters, etc. All told the install took about 5 minutes. Piece of cake.