In this section, we are going to discuss the methodology and components required for designing and setting up our own penetration testing lab. To build our lab, we are going to build a virtual lab infrastructure to ensure that we are able to save money, as opposed to having to buy physical computers and networking equipment.

In the following sections, we will begin our discussion on the importance of using virtualization in building our penetration testing lab environment, as virtualization plays an important role throughout this chapter and the remainder of the book. Afterward, we will dive into installing Kali Linux and creating a virtual network.