Elastic Lab (part 1) - Install VMWare Workstation Pro
William Douglass
Cyber Threat Analyst, Adjunct Cybersecurity Professor, Small Business Owner
In part zero I explained a little about what this project is all about. Now it's time to build the infrastructure.
I'm using a nice Dell laptop running Windows 11 with plenty of processor, RAM, and storage space to run Virtual Machines (VMs) and still listen to some excellent tunes in Youtube at the same time. VMWare has long been the gold standard for virtualization. In 2024 VMWare was acquired by Broadcom and there were changes with pricing and licensing, but as of February 2025, VMWare Workstation Pro is available to download and use free of charge.
Workstation Pro can be difficult to find- clicking on links took me around in circles a few times until I was able to break out of the cycle and find the download page.
1- Create an account and login on the broadcom support page.
2- Navigate in the same browser to this link. I always use the most current "stable" version of software. "Beta" or other software still in development, or software which is older, may cause issues later.
I installed Workstation Pro, and just for good measure checked for updates, then restarted Windows. Often the software needs to write to files that are currently being used by the system, so a restart helps everything feel nicely at home. Then startup VMWare!
Because many of the Elastic components have to be tied to a specific IP address, I opted to turn off Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP)- it can later change which IP address the Virtual Machines (VMs) use.
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I turned off the Local DHCP service and created a Subnet to use. Anything in the 192.168.X.X range will work- because those IP addresses can't be routed across the internet they're great for local use. Subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 (also known as /24 or "slash 24") is the easiest to use to prevent conflicts.
You can use whatever the software picks for you or be specific- no need to copy my settings. But I will refer to these IP address settings later through my build. NOTE that I have multiple vmnet# on my system, I have built Elastic out twice on this system.
Keep track of your IP addresses! You'll need to know what they are whenever you configure things manually.
NEXT is download and install the Operating System (Debian) in VMWare. Click here for Part 2.