2022 TUTORIAL: HOW TO INSTALL PARROT OS SECURITY EDITION 5.0.1 (ELECTRO ARA) ON VMWARE ESXI 6.

Parrot OS is the ultimate operating system built for cyber security operations. Its the ideal operating system used by many cyber security students and professionals to learn and complete complex cyber security and ethical hacking tasks. Parrot Security provides a huge arsenal of tools, utilities and libraries that IT and security professionals can use to test and assess the security of their assets in a reliable, compliant and reproducible way. From information gathering to the final report. The Parrot system gets you covered with the most flexible environment. The system is designed from the ground up to be secure. Native support for full disk encryption, blazing fast security updates and a hardened debian core makes the system the perfect place to store sensitive data. Parrot is based on top of Debian, the most advanced and recognized universal operating system that can run anywhere. From your laptop to your Phone, the Parrot core can be executed on a huge range of environments, including servers, IoT boards, cloud containers (like docker and podman) and more. The system is Free and Open Source, and all the code that powers the system is made available either through APT software repositories or PARROT OS GIT servers for you to read, customize and contribute to. In this video tutorial you will learn how to install PARROT OS SECURITY EDITION version 5.0.1 on VMWARE ESXI 6.0 in a few simple steps.

REQUIREMENTS

In order to complete this tutorial successfully, the following is a list of items that are needed. Please ensure to have these items available before taking implementation action on this tutorial to ensure success:
1) The Parrot OS 5.0.1 security edition disk image file (ISO FILE)
2) A desktop or laptop with a dual core processor, 4GB RAM, 50gb free and a web browser for accessing the ESXi web dashboard
3) A server or cloud hosted solution running VMware ESXi 6.0 or any newer version
4) The VMware remote console or VMware workstation / VMware fusion to access the virtual machines user interface
5) An internet connection to download PARROT OS updates.

OVERVIEW

1) Download the PARROT OS disk image file from the PARROT OS website
2) Open a web browser and log into the ESXi web based dashboard
3) Open the ESXi datastore and upload the PARROT OS disk image file
4) Create a new DEBIAN virtual machine and attach the PARROT OS ISO file to the virtual machine
5) Start the virtual machine, install PARROT OS and install PARROT OS updates

STEP 1: DOWNLOAD THE PARROT OS DISK IMAGE FILE FORM THE PARROT OS WEBSITE

1) The first step in deploying PARROT OS on VMWARE ESXi is to download the PARROT disk image file from the official downloads page. Click HERE to go to the page, expand the SECURITY EDITION section and click on the DOWNLOAD button.

STEP 2: Open a web browser and log into the ESXi web based dashboard

2) Next, open a new web browser tab and type in the login URL for your ESXi server. Enter your ESXi username and password and click on LOGIN. Once you have logged in, click on VIRTUAL MACHINES and click on CREATE / REGISTER VIRTUAL MACHINE to open the virtual machine creation wizard. On the “SELECT CREATION TYPE” step, select the CREATE A NEW VIRTUAL MACHINE option and click on NEXT

3) Next, set the name of the virtual machine to PARROT OS VM, select ESXi 6.0 VIRTUAL MACHINE on the COMPATIBILITY drop down, set the GUEST OS FAMILY to LINUX and the GUEST OS VERSION to DEBIAN GNU/LINUX (64 BIT) and click on NEXT.

4) Next, choose the DATASTORE to save virtual machine files from the list of available datastores on your ESXi server and click on NEXT.

5) On the CUSTOMIZE SETTINGS page, set the number of CPU’s to allocate to the virtual machine to 4, the amount of MEMORY to 4 and the size of the virtual hard disk to 500GB. Ensure that the DISK PROVISIONING option is set to THIN PROVISIONED, scroll down and click on NEXT.

6) On the READY TO COMPLETE window, you will see a summary of the PARROT OS virtual machine that you are about to create. Review each parameter and if you are happy click on FINISH to complete the virtual machine creation process.

STEP 3: Open the ESXi datastore and upload the PARROT OS disk image file

7) The next step is to upload the PARROT OS disk image file (ISO FILE) to the VMWARE ESXi server. To do this, click on the STORAGE TAB and click on DATASTORE BROWSER. Select or create a folder to upload the ISO file to then click on the UPLOAD button on the top left corner.

Browse to the folder where the PARROT OS DISK IMAGE FILE is located, select it and click on OPEN. You should now see a file upload progress bar on the top left corner of the DATASTORE BROWSER.

STEP 4: ATTACH THE PARROT OS ISO IMAGE FILE TO THE PARROT OS VIRTUAL MACHINE.

8) Once the file upload process is complete, close the DATASTORE browser and click on VIRTUAL MACHINES. Right click on the PARROT OS VIRTUAL MACHINE and click on SETTINGS. Scroll down to the CD / DVD drive, select the DATASTORE option, browse to the folder where the PARROT OS ISO file is located, select it and click on SELECT. This will attach the PARROT OS ISO FILE to the PARROT OS VIRTUAL MACHINE CD / DVD DRIVE.

STEP 4: START THE VIRTUAL MACHINE AND INSTALL PARROT OS

9) Next, click on the PLAY button on the virtual machine preview window or click on the POWER ON button to start the virtual machine.

10) Once the virtual machine starts up, click on CONSOLE and click on LAUNCH REMOTE CONSOLE. Depending on the CONSOLE application that you are using, you will see a CERTIFICATE VERIFICATION popup prompting you that the server cannot be verified, this can happen if your ESXi server is using a self signed SSL certificate. Click on CONTINUE to proceed with the connection.

11) Once the PARROT OS console opens up, use your keyboard arrow keys to select the TRY / INSTALL option and press ENTER

12) Double click on INSTALL PARROT OS to open the CALAMERES INSTALLER FOR PARROT OS and click on NEXT

13) Select your LOCATION and desired KEYBOARD LAYOUT and on the PARTITIONS tab select the ERASE DISK option and click on NEXT.

14) Next, type in your name on the WHAT IS YOUR NAME input box. Enter your username on the “WHAT NAME DO YOU WANT TO USE TO LOG IN” input box and also a computer name on the “WHAT IS THE NAME OF THIS COMPUTER” input box. Type in a secure password (use a password that has a lower case, uppercase , special character and number) on the password fields and click on NEXT.

15) On the INSTALLATION summary page, you will see an overview of what will happen once you start the install procedure, go through the overview and if there are any changes you would like to make click on the BACK button. If there are no changes to be made simply click on the INSTALL button to proceed then click on INSTALL NOW on the popup message.

16) Once the installation process is complete, click on the RESTART NOW check box and click on the DONE button.

17) Once the virtual machine restarts, type in your password on the LOGIN page and you can now start using PARROT OS for ethical hacking and penetration testing tasks

STEP 4: CHECK FOR PARROT OS UPDATES AND UPGRADES

18) Since PARROT OS is a DEBIAN based IT security operating system, you can run the following commands to check for and install package updates and upgrades:

sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

To upgrade PARROT OS to a newer release version run the following commands:

sudo apt-get install parrot-core

sudo parrot-upgrade

sudo reboot