VMWare setup - bridged network?

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Is it better to go for the bridged network option when configuring the VMWare device (so it just appears on my home network as another server) or actually create a virtual network within VMWare and then bridge to my home network?

The reason I'm asking is that it looks as if you have to install DHCP on server01 (as outlined in the official 290-70 exam book) and DHCP is already managed by my modem/router. Will this cause a problem?

Thanks!

 

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I personally always opt for the bridged option as this creates another virtual ethernet adapter hence allowing a static ip address etc. I think you can try both and settle for whichever is suitable for you;

 

and DHCP running on the server won't interfere with the DHCP server on the modem?

 

It shouldn't do as you're using the private ip address range 192.168.0.x etc, but make sure your routers default gateway is entered into the virtual ethernet adapter static ip setup. I have this at home and its does not affect my adsl router and firewall whatsoever.

 

I've *got* to be misunderstanding this. Here's my take.

If you bridge the VMware network to the local LAN, all machines, hardware and virtual, will be on the same subnet. This includes the broadband modem providing DHCP on the LAN. If you set up a virtual server on this subnet as an *additional* DHCP server then yes, they'll goof each other up.

To test DHCP in a virtual network and not have it affect your local LAN, you'd need to create a separate (virtual) subnet. If you want this subnet to hit the internet, then you need a router of some sort between the virtual network and the local LAN.

Now, if I've completely misunderstood all this and am barking up the wrong tree, I apologize in advance.

 

That's correct, but am sure he started he has a router already

 

Sorry. The way I read it (and still do), I thought Rich was referring to his "modem/router" which would sit between his local LAN and the Internet. He'd need to configure a router between his virtual network and local LAN to do what he wants or disable DHCP on the modem device and let his virtual server handle DHCP (which would mean he'd have to have the VM server up all the time).

 

The question you need to ask yourself is do you actually need internet access on your lab? If not then you could simply set the Lab's NIC's to local only, thus allowing you to play with DHCP in your lab until your hearts content.

 

True Si, but I was thinking in terms of installing the latest patches and all that on the VMs. Unpatched systems just *bug* me.

 

Thanks for the replies. I'm a little more confused now I reckon I could get round it by limiting my modem/routers DHCP scope so that it doesn't conflict with the virtual servers DHCP scope. However this wouldn't make me understand what some people are getting at here!

Just to clarify things a little, my (very basic) setup is like this.

BT ADSL into a Modem/Router. Modem/Router provides DHCP for my laptop. Laptop is running VMWare which has a virtual windows 2003 server.

@tripwire45

What you suggest sounds like creating a virtual network within VMWare as this would indeed result in a (virtual) router sitting between the virtual network and the BT Model/Router. (That's how it looks in the VMWare diagram anyway!)

Is this what you meant?

 

Let me put together some diagrams and get back with you in a bit. I think the visuals will help explain all this better.

 

Ok, I've created three diagrams called "basic setup", "modified1", and "modified2".

Basic setup diagrams what your current network setup is now with the ASDL device providing router and DHCP services (probably DNS, too but that's another story). The laptop receives an IP address dynamically from the ADSL device and is running VMware. You have installed a Windows Server 2003 virtual machine in VMware and the network is bridged so the VM is on the same subnet (10.0.0.0/24) as the laptop and the modem's LAN port. In this configuration, the server cannot run DHCP services. Even if you limit the scope and have both DHCP servers providing addresses on the same subnet, the laptop will become "confused" as to which server it should get an address from. Remember, this is just one network, regardless of whether or not the machines are hardware or virtual.

Modified1 describes the first setup where you can run DHCP services both in the ADSL device and on the virtual server. It requires two things: that the virtual and local LAN networks not be bridged and that you create a *second* virtual server machine and then configure that VM to act as a router. You create your original Windows Server 2003 and set it up to offer DHCP services on a separate network. The virtual router routes traffic between the two subnets so that your VM can connect to the laptop, ASDL device, and hit the Internet. The DHCP traffic from your VM is isolated on the virtual subnet and can't interfere with DHCP services on the local LAN.

Modified2 is what Si suggested. Create your setup as originally conceived but just don't bridge the networks. Your VM will be completely isolated from the local LAN and from the Internet and can safely provide DHCP on its own subnet (this is probably the easiest setup, but Modified2 would be more fun).

My diagrams are attachments to this post so you can open them and have a look. My suggestion is to create at least one virtual client such as a virtual Windows XP machine that get's IP addressing dynamically from your virtual DHCP server. After all, you want to make sure it works.

Hope this helps some.

 

OK thanks for your help. I'll have a go at the Modified 1 first.

I'm happy with configuring the virtual network side of things, but I'll probably be back soon to ask how on earth do you configure a router! ;)

 

Does anyone have any instructions or can link to a guide to setting up a router in WMWare as in the Modified1 setup? Would I need to use ISA for this?

Thanks

 

Hi, sorry to re-use this thread but it is exactly what i'm looking for.

I've got a setup similar to tripwire45's modified one where all my domain machines are on a virtual lan segment (ip range 192.168.100.x) and using a windows xp vm as a router. On the vm router, one virtual ethernet adaptor is connected to the virtual lan segment (192.168.100.x) and the other is bridged with my physical lan (192.168.1.x) - however, i cannot access the internet from my virtual machines by ip address (as dns is not setup) or ping my physical router, only on the vm acting as a router.

I enabled the windows xp vm as a router editing the registry iprouterenabled = 1, turned off the firewall. All machines on their subnet can contact each other. I'm using vmware workstation 6

What am i doing wrong - any help would be great as i want to setup a exchange server to send/receive external mail as well as a dhcp server but i do not want it to interfere with my physical network.

Thanks

 

What are the network settings on each adapter?
Where is the DNS server set up?
I've never tried to use an XP machine as a router, so don't even know if thats possible.

I think I understand what you are trying to do - let me see if I've got it straight:

1 - You have a DSL/Cable router that provides a WAN IP address.
2 - You have an internal network (LAN 1) hanging off of this router (192.168.1.0/24). There is no DNS server set up on this internal network - you use your ISPs DNS servers - provided by the DSL/Cable router - for name resolution.
3 - You have a second internal network (LAN 2) - entirely virtual (192.168.100.0/24) that you want to be able to route external traffic to the Internet, but not to your internal LAN
4 - You have set up a Windows XP machine as a 'router' on LAN 2, with one interface in LAN 2 and the other in LAN 1

If that's correct, then you have no name resolution on the virtual LAN - you will never be able to 'talk' to the Internet. I suspect also, since you haven't mentioned it, that you haven't set default gateways etc on the interfaces of the VMs - which may explain why you are also not able to ping hosts on LAN 1

 

I think you are going wrong by trying to use XP as a router. As Zeb said, I don't know if it's even possible, it's certainly not what I would use even if it did work properly. Server 2003 with RRAS setup is what you want there really.

The way I went around solving the problem of multiple DHCP servers on the same subnet was to simply turn off DHCP on my ADSL Modem / Router. I guess I would have more PC's than your average person, but still not enough that it would be a problem to set static IP addresses on all my physical PC's. The main reason I did this was because my main test server was a physical one as opposed to virtual and that had my DHCP server on it. I didn't want to leave that on all the time, so set static IP's on any phsical machines that needed internet access. (or use Alternative IP addressing for the best of both worlds).

Z3usx - you refer to your virtual machines as domain machines (and I would assume by this, they are part of a domain) yet also state thet you don't have DNS set up. I could be missing something here, but I thought DNS was a critical and essential component of a domain so how is it working without DNS?

If you can ping your physical router from the physical network, but not from the virtual one, then it would seem obvious that traffic is not being routed between the two networks. Until you can get that sorted you will never get internet access on your VM's.

 

Hi, thanks for the replies - i set up the xp router using this method http://www.home-network-help.com/ip-forwarding.html.

All the virtual machines have the router 192.168.100.1 interface as there default gateway and i am able to ping this and all other virtual machines on this LAN address.

As of yet, i am not using dns to resolve ip's address on the virtual lan, just ip's. The reason for this is because i haven't setup dns on my domain as the domain has not been created yet - i wanted to make sure i could get the routing right before i proceed without screwing up the dhhcp.

Tripwire4 mentions using a vm as a router - so i assume it can work. I will try using a server 2003 vm as a router using rras, but does it have to be within a domain or just standalone?

Thanks

 

Server 2k3 with RRAS should work just fine in a workgroup as well as joined to a domain.

 

I have host machine on vista and guest m/c on linux. I am connected to LAN with ip 172.24.57.205 now i m trying to connect my linux(on vm) to internet, how should i do that. When i ping my own ip address(172.24.57.205) it ping correctly but when i ping some other address on network it shows redirect network (new nexthop: 172.24.63.254) , please tell me what should i do.