two Fusion networking questions

[aaron_sf]

1. Is there any limit to the number of VMs I can run simultaneously in bridged mode, all sharing a single physical NIC on my machine? (aside from memory and resources ... I have 32GB ram) ...

I ask because sometimes, when I have 4-6 or more vm's on the go at once, some seem to loose connectivity for no reason.....

2. Can I make the NIC address stick for a particular VM? It seems each time I restart it, the adapter NIC address changes, which screws up my DHCP assignment and port forwarding schemes....

[WoodyZ]

2. Can I make the NIC address stick for a particular VM? It seems each time I restart it, the adapter NIC address changes, which screws up my DHCP assignment and port forwarding schemes....

If you want a Virtual Machine's Network Adapter to maintain the same IP Address then assign a Static IP Address that is outside the Scope of the DHCP Server's IP Address Pool along with the appropriate Subnet Mask, Gateway and DNS Server IP Addresses.

[WoodyZ]

1. Is there any limit to the number of VMs I can run simultaneously in bridged mode, all sharing a single physical NIC on my machine? (aside from memory and resources ... I have 32GB ram) ...

I ask because sometimes, when I have 4-6 or more vm's on the go at once, some seem to loose connectivity for no reason.....

A single Fusion 2.x Virtual Machine can support up to 10 virtual Ethernet cards however I do not know if that counts as an aggregate total of all active virtual adapters at one time over more then one Virtual Machine or if that is per physical adapter as well however since you have a Mac Pro and could have two or more Ethernet Adapters you could assign certain Virtual Machines to different physical adapters thus spreading the load and this may help eliminate loss of connectivity.

Have a look at:

[aaron_sf]

So I enabled my 2nd physical NIC (didn't realize I had two ! ) and now my mac pro has two DHCP ip's ... cool. Ok now I want my bootcamp XP vm to run on the second NIC... I looked at the VMXExtras tool but I don't know where the vmx file for the bootcamp vm is... so I may try the other script-based tool next.

generally speaking though... I want to be able to see my bootcamp machine from all of my other VMs (and the mac pro itself) .. so I wanted them all to be on the same subnet. Giving the bootcamp machine a static IP will break that.

In windows vmware i'm pretty sure you can fix the NIC address used by a virtual NIC on a vm no? So i'd rather do it that way if possible ... even if it means tweaking scripts manually ..... as I see there is no GUI for network config in fusion yet (at least not to the same sophistication as thereis on windows workstation) ...

also - when does the 'Custom' menu item enable itself ? (ie when you right-click the virtual NIC on the fusion vm) ... for me it is always disabled... what's it for?

thanks

A

Mac Pro 8-core 4TB HDD 32GB RAM

[WoodyZ]

I looked at the VMXExtras tool but I don't know where the vmx file for the bootcamp vm is...

For help with the location of the Virtual Machine's .vmx configuration file have a look at or .

I want to be able to see my bootcamp machine from all of my other VMs (and the mac pro itself) .. so I wanted them all to be on the same subnet. Giving the bootcamp machine a static IP will break that.

It will only break it if you assign it a IP Address that is not on the same Subnet or on the same Subnet and is already in use. All of my product systems, physical or virtual are manually configured and have been assigned static IP Address that are outside the scope of the DHCP Server's IP Address Pool and none of then has a problem communicating with each other within the same Subnets so for you to say "Giving the bootcamp machine a static IP will break that" would seem to me that this only means you may not know what you're doing in this particular case.

In windows vmware i'm pretty sure you can fix the NIC address used by a virtual NIC on a vm no? So i'd rather do it that way if possible ... even if it means tweaking scripts manually ..... as I see there is no GUI for network config in fusion yet (at least not to the same sophistication as thereis on windows workstation)

VMware Fusion does not have a GUI form managing its Virtual network Infrastructure but has provided VM@Work Tokamak for that and I gave you the link to that document.

also - when does the 'Custom' menu item enable itself ? (ie when you right-click the virtual NIC on the fusion vm) ... for me it is always disabled... what's it for?

You cannot modify the Custom Settings from the Fusion GUI and it is just there to show you that you have implemented custom setting on that device and to modify the custom settings you wull have to to that the same way you created it in the first place.

[aaron_sf]

yes thanks Woody ... i was having a brain-fart regarding the static IP thing... all I had to do was restrict the range of dynamic IPs my dhcp server dishes out... and statically assign to ones above that, but in the same subnet...

problem solved.

generally speaking you are right - I have no idea what i'm doing

Mac Pro 8-core 4TB HDD 32GB RAM