Epsilon: Information security laboratory using virtualization technology

Information security laboratories, composed mainly of machines with different operating systems, are the most effective tools used in teaching the practical aspects of information security. However, there are challenges in the implementation of such laboratories due to the amount of time and required for the physical setup and maintenance. To address these issues, a system that utilizes virtualization technology is created in order to reduce the expense in purchasing many machines. The system is composed of two components: the Epsilon Administrator and the Epsilon Server. The Epsilon Administrator contains a clean copy of the different virtual machines, while the Epsilon Server contains the virtual machines that are used for experiments. The Epsilon Administrator manages and monitors several Epsilon Servers. The virtual machines in the Epsilon Servers are originally from the Epsilon Administrator. Since the size of virtual machines is relatively large, a caching mechanism is implemented to reduce the time to replicate the virtual machine from the Epsilon Administrator to the Epsilon Server. Experiment shows that through the use of cache, the load time can be reduced up to 82.2% compared to a set-up without cache