In the lab network I have setup, I wanted to setup a transparent proxy. Why? Three main reasons. First, I run a wide-open WiFi hotspot, and I wanted to log traffic so that I would have some kind of audit trail should any issues arise. Second, I wanted to conserve Internet bandwidth usage by implementing caching. Last, I wanted to block pesky website ads (standard, pop-up, pop-under) and other malice. After some digging, I discovered that the Cisco 1841 router I had at the core of the network, and a Linux server in the rack, just may be the key.

Where I work (an international mining and construction equipment manufacturer), we started looking into VMware's ESX product for virtualizing many of our servers. We decided on using two HP ProLiant DL360 G5 servers, each with (2) quad-core Intel Xeon processors and 24GB of RAM, to run ESX on.