Connection between Guest and Host os

[vasanthan]

Hi,

I am new to VMWare and I am about to evaluate and purchase VMWare Workstation. One of the main reasons I am considering virtualisation is that I had bad virus attacks couple of time and I had to rebuild my PC from scratch which was real pain. Also, I lost few important files during those attacks.

Cople of things I would like to find out before purchase. Some of these questions may have been asked in this forum already.

1. How is the connectivity between the guest and host works? Can I save a file from guest OS into the host (to the physical drive)? Most likely guest and host will be Microsoft OS's

2. Can we easily turn on-off the access right for the guest on to the host (like read only)

3. Description says guest is completely isolated. Is it really isolated from host? Are there any exceptions?

4. Firewall and virus/spyware scanners on the host, will they automatically protect guest? Do I have to install a copy of them in the guest OS?

I will appreciate your replies.

Thanks,

Siva.

[KevinG]

Hi,

I am new to VMware and I am about to evaluate and

purchase VMware Workstation. One of the main reasons

I am considering virtualisation is that I had bad

virus attacks couple of time and I had to rebuild my

PC from scratch which was real pain. Also, I lost few

important files during those attacks.

Couple of things I would like to find out before

purchase. Some of these questions may have been asked

in this forum already.

1. How is the connectivity between the guest and host

works? Can I save a file from guest OS into the host

(to the physical drive)? Most likely guest and host

will be Microsoft OS's

You can networking like you would between two more physical machines. Another option is to use the feature called VMware Shared folders.

2. Can we easily turn on-off the access right for the

guest on to the host (like read only)

3. Description says guest is completely isolated. Is

it really isolated from host? Are there any

exceptions?

If you use networking or shared folders, you are not completely isolated.

4. Firewall and virus/spyware scanners on the host,

will they automatically protect guest? Do I have to

install a copy of them in the guest OS?

Yes, you should treat this virtual machine just like another physical machine.

There is nothing stopping malware from being downloaded from email or a web site if you use networking in this virtual machine. Install anti-virus and spyware software

Here is something you can do with a virtual machine that can not easily be done with a physical machine.

You could configure a virtual machine to use independtent nonpersistent virtual disks after you have installed the OS and application you want in this virtual machine.

Once the disk are nonpersistent, you could use this virtual machine to safely browse the internet. Since once you power off this virtual machine, any changes that were made to the disk are discarded on power off.

This makes for a handy VM to safely browse the internet, since if you should download any spyware or virus. It will be removed once the VM is powered off.

I will appreciate your replies.

Thanks,

Siva.

Hi Siva.

[telfred]

As you are planning to use Windows OSes on the host and the VM guest it is possible to drag and drop files between from Windows explorer on one to Windows explorer on the other. Also the clipboard is shared between them so text can be copied back and forth.

This would leave them more isolated than using shared folders.

Another option for moving files about would be using a Windows network share on another machine to "pass" files between the two computers.

[Rochus]

Hello

I am also a newbie to VMware.

I have a configured Windows Server 2003 running on a Dell PowerEdge 2900. My VMware version is 1.0.3 and I believe its a GSX server.

On top of the Windows Server 2003 is the VMware running Windows Server 2003.

In this trial run, my host OS can ping my guest os. My guest OS can ping my host OS.

I call my host OS BCS4 and my guest OS ts1.

I want to share files between the BCS4 and ts1. BCS4 and ts1 are on the same domain.

I turned on the share feature on my ts1 harddrive. But I cannot access the ts1 harddrive from BCS4. I get a timed-out error. I also shared a folder on my BCS4 computer and I can't accessed the folder from ts1.

My firewall is off for BCS4. Firewall is turned off in ts1 also.

-Rochus

[nick_couchman]

Did you try using IP addresses instead of hostnames? So, instead of
BCS4, use the IP address of BCS4.