Isolated Virtual Lab

[UT2015]

Hi,

I don't fully understand the concept of virtual labs yet. It seems to me that the virtual labs are always connected to the production network. But in that case I must not start any production vm in the virtual lab, because it would collide with the existing vm in the production environment or am I wrong?

I would like to have a virtual lab, which is completely isolated. I would like to start some VMs in that environment, e.g. DC, DNS, DHCP and I would like to test modifications in that environment (e.g. Microsoft Hotfixes) to make sure that they work. Is that possible?

Best regards,
UT2015

[nielsengelen]

A virtual lab is not connected to the production network by default so you don't have to worry about duplicate IPs or any issues with the production environment. You will configure a virtual lab and within that lab you can run VM's from backups or storage snapshots. You can then use these to test changes as you want. You can look at this 1 hour VeeamLive video for more deepdive information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sePe9UDZoP8 - even though it is from 2014 it is still relevant.

[UT2015]

What I still don't get (after watching the video) is the IP of the proxy. In the video is said that it should be the IP of the gateway of the production network. I don't get this. The gateway in a production network is in most cases some kind of router. I cannot use that IP twice in the network for the proxy?

Can you please give me an example? Let's say my dc has an IP of 10.0.0.10 as in the video, and the gateway address of the dc is set to 10.0.0.1. What IP address would be the correct one for the proxy?

[UT2015]

I read some more threads in the forum. Okay, the proxy shall get the gateway IP from an isolated network point of view.

But is there still an isolation in that case? From the production network I am able to connect to the isolated machines with the masqueraded IP addresses (is that correct or can I access the machines only with static mapped IP addresses?). Can the isolated VMs only access the proxy application (what for?) or is the traffic routed from the proxy back into the production network (to the "real" gateway)?

Edit: It would be really helpful for newbies if there would be some kind of drawing showing the routing between production and isolated network. Maybe you should integrate that into the manual or even into the virtual lab creation wizard.

[nielsengelen]

Have a look at the following deepdive blog: http://blog.dewin.me/2013/04/surebackup ... pdive.html

This should answer most of your questions and it contains an example as requested. Let me know if something still would be unclear.