I have a VM that I am running a NMS application on that is licensed based on the MAC address and the IP address. Of course it nearly takes and act of God to get the license updated to reflect any kind of MAC/IP address change.
Is there a way that I can bridge a physical NIC through to a virtual machine so the physical MAC address is available on the guest?
That works as long as I don't move the service off VMWare. I am hoping to use the actual physical MAC so that if I have to move the service off VMWare I can yank the NIC as well and everyone will be happy.
Is there a way that I can bridge a physical NIC through to a virtual machine so the physical MAC address is available on the guest?
Can't be done, but there may be another way round it. If you are running a windows host you could try setting the MAC address as a property of the vNIC driver. Look under the advanced tab on the dialog.This overrides anything set by ESX - or so I'm told !
I would suggest not setting the MAC address of the VMs vNIC to one that is present on your physical environment.
If you want to set the vNIC to the MAC address of a physical NIC you have then put the physical NIC in a drawer in your desk to be used if you migrate the VM back to physical.
I created a static mac address using this http://www.run-virtual.com/?page_id=173 and then used the network properties within the O/S to override the MAC address so no matter what physical nic this system runs on it will always present the same MAC.
Of course its probably going to confuse people when an IBM or HP box gives out a vmware MAC...but thats half the fun anyhow 🐵
