Setting up a VMware Test environment

To test functions like importing OVA files in VMware ESXi and with vCenter the trial phase and a local deployment can be used. You need the following requirements:

• VMware Workstation on Windows or VMware Fusion on Mac OSX
• VMware Hypervisor ISO image to install the ESXi host system
• VMware vCenter ISO image for local deployment

If you just want to learn how it works you can get a 60 days trial license registering an account on VMware. I had to manually select a Bridged network for the ESXi server. The vCenter appliance used a Bridge network by default. connected them to a bridged network. You can use DHCP if you want, but you need to make sure they get the same IP addresses afterwards.

Hardening SSH for audit

Running a server in the public requires some additional work. Especially if you want management access via SSH for Ansible or if you want break stuff manually with fiddeling around :)

You can run an SSH audit of your public server using https://www.sshaudit.com. This section here is a very condensed way to get an A rating.

Just use strong host key for authentication of the host

# file: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key

Delete existing keys and re-generate the RSA and ED25519 keys