Create a Complete Virtual Environment for Penetration Testing (PART- 4)

Create linked Clones for Windows Server 2012

 In Part-2 we learned how to install Windows Server and connect it to Pfsense. Today, In this tutorial we are going to learn how to create linked clones for Windows Server 2012.

Tutorial Requirement:

1- VirtualBox

2- Windows Server R 2012 virtual machine

Tutorial Guideline:

1- General Idea about Cloning

2- Creating Linked Clones of Windows Server

Step 1:  General Idea about Cloning

Cloning is one of the most essential feature that most of the latest visualization software have such as  VirtualBox and VMware. Cloning is a process of creating a virtual copy of the either of the hard drive of the computer,or in our case the VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk) of our virtual machine.The benefits of cloning are limitless. Cloning can help save disk space as you do not have to allocate new space for you virtual machine, as the clone takes the same amount of space of the old one.For example if you allocate a new machine with 25GB,the clone will have 25GB too, no more no less.Also, cloning saves time. You can create a machine and install its operating system and all the updates, then start testing on it all sort of things, like new attacks or testing some types of malware or Trojans without worrying about wrecking your machine and recreate it again, as you know that your original one is saved.

There are 2 main types of cloning:

1- Full Clone: where you create a full copy of the machine with its updates and services.

2- Linked Clone: is an advanced feature of cloning where it creates a new machine that linked to the original machine. In our case, the linked clones will be linked to the Windows machine and it would run different types of servers

like Web Server, SQL server, Windows Deployment Services (WDS),or Exchange Server.

NOTE: both of the machines, the original and the cloned one should be saved in the same path 

 Now that we got a general idea about cloning, Let’s start ……….

Step 2: Creating Linked Clones of Windows Server

  1- Fire up your VrtualBox and choose Windows Server machine. Right Click on it and choose Clone.

 – For now, we will call it Clone 1 later we can rename it as the type of server it is going to run on.

– Choose Linked Clone and click clone

For the setting, you do not need to change anything.

 – Now open up your Pfsense box.

    

  – Try pinging from your cloned  machine, You should get a reply from Pfsense as well as an Internet connection too.

     

     

    – Notice that your cloned machine has the same IP address as the original one. My Server IP is  10.0.0.8 same as the blow clone one

         

NOTE:  to check the path of your virtual machine in case you want to transfer them to a new computer .

Right click on the machine and choose show in Explorer

• Remember, if you are transferring linked clone machines, you have to make sure that you transfer the base original machine too. Otherwise it won’t work.
• For full cloned machine now worries, you can transfer them as an individual machines without any dependencies

For this tutorial, I’ll only keep it as one clone . Later we will add more to run different type of servers