Hi Marshel007,

Welcome to EH-Net Good to see you've already found several of the posts that contain information in regards to setting up a test lab.

It sounds like you've already put quite a bit of thought into this and what you would like to do/accomplish and you seem to have a pretty good plan.

Good luck and if you run into any problems and have questions, there are a lot of helpful people around here.

Bill

Yes you are on your way. But be free to set it up in different ways. I like to attack the server and then go to client boxes. Other times I like to attack a client and then own the server. My point is, you should be flexible in your lab configuration. There is not just one way!  Keep changing it around. Also, when you are more comfortable, try introducing a lot of traffic to make a real feel of a congested network.  If you play with it., you can really make it feel like a live network you are attacking.  One important point is to install each OS in its default configs. Then keep updating until you can no longer exploit. Then try installing 3rd party apps. See if you can exploit those.

The best lab is a flexible thing that you play with. As they say way too often, think outside the box! 

Last night I was playing with my lab more than I should, let's just say that I messed up some stuff, and three of my
PCs went down   
and I only have one PC now, which have 1 GB ram, Do you know what that means ?? Yep, thank god I still get the
chance to run VMware and setup another Virtual lab, until I repair the other Boxes 

Anyway, on top of windows XP-SP2, I installed 3 VMs:
- Windows server 2000
- Windows server 2003
- Linux (Fedora and Back|Track2)

This is what I did the first time when I first got the chance to setup a lab:
- scanning and discovering the security holes on windows 2000 server
and hardening the system and close unneeded ports (make it more secure)
Note: some may argue that windows 2000 server is too old and you won't learn anything from it.
will, it is always good thing to start from point zero and start learning, so after I feel that That I got
bored from windows 2000 server then I go to practice on windows 2003 server and so on.

- setting SAMBA on the Linux box.

Also, I found real great book called:
Practical Hacking Techniques and Countermeasures
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Hacking-Techniques-Countermeasures-Spivey/dp/0849370574/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196512700&sr=8-1

It shows a lot of the most common security holes and how to exploit them and close them. I wouldn't recommend it for Newbies because it doesn't explain exactly how these holes work or how did they show up.
But, it is great if you already knew about networks, at least that is my opinion.

...and I' will tell you guys more soon when I got the time.
funny thing is when someone have a lot time to kill he doesn't do any thing useful, and when someone is so busy
he remembers how could he invest his time in learning new skills.

as I said before [any comment or suggestions would be great help for me ?? ]

Peace.

_Marshel_ sorry to hear about your PC mishap.  One suggestion I would make is that after you rebuild/repair your lab you get a good baseline image of all your machines before you start "messing around" again.  That way no matter what you do it is much quicker to get your lab back up and running again.  Good Luck!