Your VirtualNET virtual machines run a Linux kernel in an Arch Linux distribution. Arch Linux uses a “rolling release” update model, which means that the software it contains is continuously updated to the latest version as soon as it becomes available.
The big advantage of this is that you always have the latest versions of the different software packages it contains — such as compilers, debugging tools, authoring tools, etc.
The big disadvantage of this is that you always have the latest versions of the different software packages it contains, and this can be a problem if a package you use gets a major upgrade that changes how it operates or what it does in the middle of your work.
In any case and with Arch Linux in particular, you pays your money and you takes your chances.
VirtualNET gives you full root access to the virtual machines you run (see operation). This means that you can configure them how you like, keeping in mind however that once you log out the virtual machines, and any changes you made (if you haven't backed them up in your home directory) are lost.
Arch Linux uses systemd to manage system services. These services are things like time/date synchronisation and the SSH server which you use to connect to your virtual machines. The systemd configuration used in VirtualNET virtual machines uses a heavily stripped-down set of systemd configuration files so that only the bare minimum of services run in your VM when you first create it.
You can then start or run any other services you like in your VMs, including database servers, web servers, authentication servers and son on.
Each virtual machine contains the following basic hardware:
You can run up to four VMs per VLAB host.