Host with dual NIC, private and public setup

[country101]

I am trying to setup an environment and I just want to make sure its secure and I am doing it right.

My host mahchine, Windows 7, has two network cards. One network card is behind a firewall and the other is open to the internet. I would like to have one of my VMware machines to be on the public network card. Now I know how to do this in the network configurator in Workstation. My question is though is that if I link the public network card to the vm machine, will my physical host machine no longer use that card. I just am afraid of having the public network card being open on my host machine.

So is having a VM machine tied to a NIC, then not allow the host machine to not use that NIC or is there a way to do this?

Thanks for any help

[nalfonso14]

you can set, but for me not sucure. Windows shares Workstation network interface, so you keep using the PCnetwork with Windows 7.

  The virtual machine is isolated but the network traffic is shared, not being performant.

single point of failure would overload the network card.

from my point of view.

I hope this information will serve

[RDPetruska · Accepted solution]

Yes, you can do this.  In the properties of the network card on the host OS, disable all protocols, clients, etc. EXCEPT the VMware Bridge Protocol.  Then, VMware can use that device but the host will not.

[country101]

Thanks a lot!

I really appreciate it