Chapter 1: Build Your Practice Lab

Build a sealed practice lab at home, with Rocky Linux 9 VMs on LXD, so every exercise in this path has a safe place to run and a fast way to reset.

What you will learn

• Prepare an Ubuntu host with LXD and create a private lab network that nothing outside can connect into.
• Build workstation, servera and serverb with a cloud-init profile that creates the lab users and installs the tools a RHEL server has.
• Set up workstation as the machine you work from, with SSH keys to both servers and the lab command that starts and grades exercises.
• Reset machines between exercises with snapshots and the rht-vmctl command.

Sections

1. What you are building
2. Prepare the host and LXD
3. Create and seal the lab network
4. Project, profile and extra disks
5. Create the VMs and check the seal
6. Prepare workstation and the lab tools
7. Snapshots and rht-vmctl
8. Your first session and daily use
9. Troubleshooting and fast rebuild