Abstract: The origin of almost all space weather related phenomenology is the large scale solar magnetic field. In this talk I'll speak about the dynamo mechanism that is operating in the solar interior and generating this large scale field and how it is modeled. I'll briefly review the classical mean-field dynamo theoretical framework usually used to tackle this problem and how observational constraints modified it over the years. I'll highlight its achievements and problems. Than I'll introduce a more recent and complementary modelling approach: 3D MHD simulations of solar convection. These simulations only recently started to exhibit solar-like features paving the way to virtual laboratories of the Sun. The results presented in this talk are based on the EULAG-MHD code.