In this article, we will add Windows 7 Host to EVE-NG Simulator. EVE-NG is a Ubuntu-based simulator that allows you to run network devices. To add Windows 7 to the EVE-NG simulator, you just need to download the Windows 7 qcow2 file. Let’s complete this step by step.

Image Source – EVE-NG

Download and Install EVE-NG on VMWare Workstation / ESXi

First, you need to set up the VMWare Workstation on your machine. VMWare Workstation comes with 30 days trial, after the trial, you need to purchase it. VMWare Workstation lets you run virtual machines just like physical machines. You can download the VMWare Workstation and install it on your machine. It is also a cross-platform software, you can install it on Windows, Linux. In case, if you are using VMWare ESXi, please check the guide EVE-NG Configuration on VMWare ESXi.

EVE-NG comes with both commercial and community editions. You need to pay for the commercial version of EVE-NG. However, the community edition of EVE-NG is free. You can simply download EVE-NG ISO and OVF template. If you are new to eve-ng, I recommend you to download EVE-NG OVF and go through eve-ng initial configuration on VMWare. In case you have hardware just for EVE-NG, you can download the ISO file and install it.

Download Windows 7 Host File for EVE-NG

First, we need to download the Windows 7 Host file. You can either download the ISO file of Windows 7 or you can simply download the qcow2 file. For easy deployment, you can download the Windows 7 qcow2 file from here. This image already has some basic software like Google Chrome, Firefox, and Putty, etc.

Create a folder for Windows 7 on EVE-NG

Now, we need to take the SSH of EVE-NG VM. Once you have access to EVE-NG VM, you need to add create a directory for Windows 7 Host.

Now, create the directory for Windows 7 Host that you want to add in EVE-NG. Your directory name should be starting from win-. In my case, the Windows 7 directory name is win-7.

Upload the Windows 7 File to the created directory/folder

Now, we need to upload the Windows 7 file that we downloaded in step 1. To upload this file to the directory, you can use WinSCP or FileZilla. If you are using Windows 10 machine, you can simply upload it using cmd. You can refer to the below command for the same.

You might have noticed that 192.168.83.137 is my EVE-NG IP address. Once the Win-7 upload part is completed, you can see the image on the created directory.

Rename the Windows7 file name

Here, we need to rename the file name of Windows7 to virtioa.qcow2. You can run the below command to rename this file.

Fix the permissions on EVE-NG

Finally, we need to fix the permissions on the EVE-NG simulator to run Windows 7. Simply, run the below command to fix the permissions.

That’s it. We have successfully deployed Windows 7 host on EVE-NG Simulator. Now, we will create a lab to run it.

Running Windows7 on a Lab in EVE-NG

Once you have completed the above steps, you can now create a lab to test the Windows 7 host. Let’s create a lab to test the newly added Windows 7 machine. Go to the web browser and open the eve-ng simulator. Create a new lab and select a Windows Node and add windows 7 to the lab.

I’ve already configured the Windows to accept RDP Console. While adding the node to the lab, you can select either RDP Console or VNC Console.

The username and password will be lab & lab.

Related Articles

• How to install Cisco ASAv Firewall in EVE-NG Simulator
• Configure Cisco ASA Firewall for ASDM Access

Summary

In this article, we have configured Windows 7 on EVE-NG Simulator. First, we have downloaded the Windows7 host file. After that, we have created a directory/folder on EVE-NG. After that, we uploaded the file to the eve-ng directory. Finally, we fix the permissions and created a lab to test windows 7.