Hi all, as the title suggests I have a VM server and I am bored. Any ideas on what I can do with it? I like trying out new things. I don’t want to setup common utilities, such as a file server or media server, I already have them. Are there any community projects that could use it? Maybe something like folding@HOME but more interactive or less CPU intensive? I thought about doing a none exit tor node but I know that would still come with some problems for my home internet I don’t really want to deal with. Maybe I could do some kind of seed box/mirror for community projects. Thanks for any idea you may have in advance.
With VMs, because they are so powerful, you can really do just about anything you want which can make it difficult to pick just one thing. Any OS, any number of computers in any hardware/software configuration…
I do a lot of dev work in VMs related to automation software. Sometimes the environment for something is really annoying to set up so I just do it once in a VM, and then document it to make sure it can be done right in the future.
Do things like network booting and OS configurations interest you? You could set up a server in a VM to network boot other VMs from and then automate the OS/software installs.
Or maybe more like programming work? Python versions/environments are annoying to switch between so maybe set up the environments to work from later.
I think I once set up a network that daisy-chained NAT routers using routing VMs to make sure I understood the concept and configurations correctly.
For application layer stuff, I have always thought repacking was really cool, but you need a lot of space and VMs for that. There are different concepts depending upon how you want things to work.
One idea is to take an application, record what changes it performs to the system and then bundle the raw data + the changes into a file. Then that application can be dynamically installed/run without ever needing to run the actual installer on a different system. VMware ThinApp works like this and so does the Citrus alternative.
Then there is the manual copy-config files method. Sometimes a lot of changes need to be made to an application and those changes are stored in a set of configuration files somewhere. So it can be helpful to configure it, save the configuration, revert the VM, reinstall the app, then test if the previously saved configuration files allow for automating the config correctly, or see what side-effects there are. Chrome is very hostile to this 
But most other software works okay.
The next one I am familiar with is the hybrid method that bundles the capturing state information with an installer. The idea is to create a custom installer for a preconfigured application. This boosts the compatibility compared to the Thin-App method (thin-app is only 32-bit software) and a lot of warez software uses this, like Fitgirl Repacks. I have been meaning to play with this since it is a very interesting concept but it requires multiple VMs and highly specialized tools.
Or you know, just be lazy and automate custom application settings with an AutoIT script and/or shell script.
The last one I am familiar with is a new concept that Microsoft introduced with Windows 10 RTM. scanstate /captureApps or something like that could capture up to 10 GB worth of arbitrary changes to a Windows 10 OS instance. So it was possible to do things like set up a VM, capture a Win10_x64_Pro_AppPackage.ppkg file, transfer it to another VM, have it “reset to factory condition” and have 10GB worth of software “pre-installed”. This is the method Dell/Lenovo/HP use to make sure their junkware stays on your system after a reset but Windows 10 stays updated after a restore operation since the restore process is actually closer to a “rebuild” of the OS.
Trying to get a VM infected with malware and seeing what happens is fun too! Be careful about pivot attacks if you go down that route tho.
I just got done modifying an old workstation to run vm’s 1 full time Kali box and the rest older os’s that I have fond memory’s of.
I used my VM server to run PFsense, A few Ubuntu servers and freenas.