EVE-NG: THE Network Emulator!
Welcome to this new section which will be completely dedicated to EVE-NG as well as importing different devices into EVE-NG, this first post will be dealing with installing EVE-NG Community edition on VMWare workstation player 15, both of which are free to use. This guide will work off the assumption that you already have Workstation Player 15 installed and that you will be performing EVE-NG setup for the first time.
Note: Updated links and post to Install EVE-NG on Gcloud
EVE-NG Community Cookbook: https://www.eve-ng.net/index.php/documentation/community-cookbook/
What exactly is EVE-NG?
EVE-NG is a network emulator which allows you to import various devices into a virtual topology that you can configure. This gives you real hands-on experience with the things that we want to learn and provides you with a safe space to make mistakes and not of to spend a lot of money to buy physical equipment to learn with.
Are you preparing for a specific certification and want to “lab” the concepts yourself. Or do you want to run a POC (Proof of Concept) that a specific solution will work or won’t work then EVE-NG Is perfect for you!
Step 1: Download EVE-NG ISO
We first need to download the EVE-NG Community Edition ISO from the EVE-NG website, you can get this by following this link:
https://www.eve-ng.net/index.php/download/#DL-COMM
Simply scroll down to “Free EVE Community Edition Links and Info” and download the ISO from either the MEGA or GOOGLE mirror. Once the ISO is downloaded remember which directory you downloaded this, we will use the ISO later to install the VM.
Step 2: Create the VM on Player
Now we will start up VMWare Player 15 and we will run through the initial settings that you must use in order to run EVE-NG, let’s start by creating a new VM by clicking on “Create a New Virtual Machine”
Select the “I will install the operating system later” radio dial and click Next.
For the Guest operating system select the “Linux” radio dial and select “Ubuntu 64-bit” as the version and click next.
Now we get to give the VM a name, in my example I will call my VM “EVE-NG Community” however, you can make this name anything you want. It is important that the LOCATION you select has adequate drive space as this will be the location where your VM is stored. If you are using a large storage drive it is recommended to perhaps store your VM on that drive.
We will now be allocating a drive size for the VM, as a minimum, I would recommend at least 40GB of storage space as a minimum! If you can assign a bigger drive then please do as it makes future expansion easier. For my home computer which has a 4TB storage drive I have given my EVE-NG server 300GB, so feel free to give as much space as you feel you can.
Also, please select the”Store virtual disk as a single file” radio dial and click on Next.
Finally, we get to customize the hardware for the VM that we are installing, please click on the “Customize Hardware….” button where we will change additional settings for the VM including mount the ISO.
While we are customizing the hardware we will first want to set the amount of memory we would like to allocate to the device. This is all dependent on your own setup. A general rule of thumb is that you can safely allocate up top 75% of your total memory. So if you have 8Gb ram you could safely assign 6Gb to the VM. Generally the minimum you want to run the VM with is 4Gb of ram.
Now we will change some of the Processor settings by clicking on “Processors”, the amount of CPUs you can assign is also dependant on your own system, I would typically recommend a minimum of 4 cores, IMPORTANT: make sure that you put a check in “Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI”
We are nearly done with setting up the virtual machine we just need to specify where the OS will be loaded from the first time by clicking on CD/DV (SATA) and select the “Use ISO image file” radio dial.
From here browse to where you downloaded the EVE-NG ISO image and select image and click on OK
The VM is now ready and we can proceed with the EVE-NG setup, just click on the “Finish” button and you will now be able to see your VM on the left-hand side below the home icon.
Select the VM and click on the “Play virtual machine” button
Step 3: Installing EVE-NG
Now that we have the VM running and should notice that the EVE-NG installation is starting. You should see a purple background where you can select a language, in my example, I will be using English and I will hit “Enter” or “Return” to proceed.
On the next screen, you will have a few options. We will select the first option “Install Eve VM” and hit “Enter” or “Return” to proceed
Note: Bare Metal is an option for people wanting to install Eve on a physical machine and not a VM.
EVE-NG will now begin the setup process there will be a few more prompts that we will need to work through the first one being the language again I will select English again and it “Enter” or “Return”
In this next prompt, you will get to select your location, this is narrowed down by your language selection if your location is not listed simply select other. Then press “Enter” or “Return” to proceed. Simply wait for the setup to copy what it needs to until the next prompts.
You will now be asked what the hostname of the system will be, you can leave this default as eve-ng or make it something unique. Once you have your hostname you can use “Tab” to navigate to continue and hit “Enter” or “Return” to proceed.
The next prompt will ask you to configure the click, where you just need to confirm your time zone, depending on earlier selections you can just tab to “Yes” and press “Enter” or “Return” to proceed.
When you are asked to Configure the package manager you can just leave that blank and tab to Continue and press “Enter” or “Return” to proceed.
When you are asked to about Configuring tasksel you can just scroll down to Install security updates automatically and press “Enter” or the “Return” key to proceed.
EVE-NG has finished copying the installation files however, the setup is NOT yet complete when you hit “Enter” or the “Return” key the system will now try and boot directly from the VM and the rest of the setup will continue.
You will see that the VM is restarting and that you receive a prompt regarding GNU GRUB. You can just hit “Enter” or the “Return” key and EVE-NG will start unpacking things in Linux and will continue the setup.
Once all the packages are done installing EVE-NG will then request that you login. Please take note of two important details. One is the login details which is U: root and P: eve by default, and the IP address.
This is the IP address between your NAT adapter and the EVE-NG VM, this will potentially be different on your system, it’s important to note that .2 in this subnet will be the default gateway you are going to use so it is a good idea to maybe write the IP down before you forget it.
After you’ve logged in EVE-NG will automatically take you into the First time setup where you can change some specific details on the server, the first detail it would like you to change is the Root password, you can also just hit “Return” or “Enter” to leave the password as “eve” you will be asked to repeat the password in the next prompt.
You will then be asked to specify a Hostname again you can leave this as eve-ng or make it something unique and hit “Enter” or “Return” to continue.
For the next prompt regarding the DNS domain name you can leave that blank and hit “Enter” or the “Return” key to continue.
Now we will be configuring IP details, you can choose to either have the server receive an IP via DHCP or static, I recommend using static as it is inconvenient if the IP keeps changing. So scroll to static press “Space” to select it and hit “Enter” or the “Return” key to proceed.
When asked what the Management Network IP Address will be this is going to be the IP Address of the actual EVE-NG server that you will connect to on your browser. Remember that IP address I mentioned earlier that would be important?
If you took down those details you can fill them in now. I tend to give my server the .200 IP address in the subnet that was assigned by the DHCP server the first time around.
Next you will be asked for the subnet address, this is typically a /24 network so you can use 255.255.255.0 as your Subnetmask. Once filled in hit “Enter” or the “Return” key to proceed.
Lastly, for the IP address information, you will be asked what the default gateway will be. This is typically the .2 IP address in your NAT range, so you can assign x.x.x.2 that your server is on as the default gateway address.
The next two prompts will be asking you for your DNS server addresses. I recommend using x.x.x.2 (your default gateway) as your primary DNS server and then Google’s DNS server as your secondary as 8.8.8.8
The NTP server on the next prompt you can just leave black and hit “Enter” or the “Return” key to continue.
And now we have reached our last prompt regarding the Proxy Server configuration, you can leave this on direct connection and hit “Enter” or the “Return” key to proceed. The server will then start some services and restart.
You will now be prompted to log into the EVE-NG server if you changed the password this will now reflect in the login screen as well.
Also Read: Download Windows Server 2012 R2 ISO Image for free
*NOTE IF YOU MADE A MISTAKE WITH THE IP SETTINGS YOU CAN REDO IT BY RUNNING THE FOLLOWING COMMAND WHICH WILL RUN YOU THROUGH THE PROMPT AGAIN*
rm -f /opt/ovf/.configured su -
The majority of the setup is now complete, we still need to just update EVE-NG so we will log back into the server on the CLI and run the following two commands:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
With the update and upgrade completed we are now able to reboot the EVE-NG server by issuing the following command:
reboot
Once the system comes back online you will now be able to access it via your browser. The default username is admin and the default password is eve to log into the EVE-NG console.
I hope this tutorial has helped you with installing EVE-NG Community edition. Happy Labbing :)!
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