Setup natting with esx server 3.5

[r_c_lebaron]

I am new to ESX. I would like to setup natting. Would someone be so kind as to give me a bit of direction on how to get started.

I have my virtual center 2.5.0 build 84767 setup with esx 3, with two windows xp vm's. I have individual static ip's setup on each.

I would like to setup several more vm's and have the ip addresses assigned automatically.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Welcome to the VMware Community forums.

ESX does not provide NAT or DHCP services as you'll find with VMware Workstation or Server. Instead with ESX you create a virtual switch and bind that switch to one or more physical NICs (you can also bind the vswitch to no physical NICs to create an isolated network). If you need DHCP you'll either need to setup a DHCP server on your network or you could use a VM as a DHCP server.

For NATing are you thinking of this for protection of the VMs? Typically what you would do then, is to create two virtual switches (say one connected to a your public network and the other to your private network). You would then create a single VM and would have two NICs - one connected to each virtual switch. You would then install appropriate software and it would provide NAT / firewall services. You can download many virtual appliances for free that wil provide this for you. For your XP VMs, they would have a single NIC and those virtual NICs would be attached to the private virtual switch. You would need a DHCP server on that network (this could be your NAT / firewall VM).

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Following Dave's comments you will need a DHCP Appliance or physical system that speaks DHCP. If you really want to implement NAT, you will be looking at a virtual firewall like IPCop or Smoothwall. I use Smoothwall generally.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

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Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354, As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[TomHowarth]

Again Welcome to the forums,

Following on from both comments, if you do implement NATing you will loose one of the major advantages of ESX in that those VM guests will not be able to participate in VMotion, even with shared storage as they will not have access to a connection to a externally facing physical NIC.

As Dave says, Networking under ESX is vai vSwitches and in a way more akin to Bridgeing with Server and Workstation. to conceptualise it consider your ESX host as a mini server room.

Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator