Some extension to the answer above:
VMware (Player) is very good for your purpose. In many businesses, like in software business, large companies use exclusively VMware to run all the meaningful software ... physical workstations and laptops are only for some office-stuff and for hosting VMware (or perhaps some other virtualization software as well). I'm now talking about last 10 years, or longer, already, for exclusive use.
You can run practically any mainstream OS and many not-so-mainstream OS's under VMware. A VM computer works, practically speaking in your case, at its worst like a physical computer. I mean that with VM you can easily:
- make 100% backup from the entire computer (with a simple copy operation)
- copy the computer to another Host, running a different OS (if it only runs VMware Player or better), and run it there (within the licensing terms of that particular OS)
- run several virtual computers within one physical computer at the same time. Or run them at different times (where available disk space is the only limitation)
- now directly for your studies: build many kinds of networks between different VM computers, where in the physical world, you would need to buy (perhaps expensive) hardware to achieve the same
When computer environments are of any interest, or a job requirement, you quickly end up having tens of different VM computers representing different technical situations. It is much more convenient than having 20 physical laptops or workstations or even separate boot disks to do the same 
.
I hope this explains further.
