How to setup a Windows Test Lab - DHCP or Static IP?

[martit01]

Hello,

On my Ubuntu host running VMware, I created a new Team consisting of Windows 2003 SP1 and Windows XP SP2. The team is configured to use NAT, but I'm uncertain what to do about Static or DHCP. Should I disable the DHCP within VMware and set my Windows Server 2003 up with a static IP setup?

Thanks,

Tom

[vmroyale]

Tom,

I set my "test lab" up in Workstation to have the VMs use host-only networking and with static IP addresses. I didn't want them to communicate with the production network in any way. I use the drag and drop feature or USB drives to move things around to the VMs. For DNS, I tend to just use the HOSTS file on most of my test labs, since there are only a few machines at most. It really depends on what you are trying to achieve and how isolated you want to keep it. If you are using domain controllers, or plan to, then static will definitely be the way to go.

Good Luck!

[AWo]

The nice thing about using DHCP in your isolated NAT (VMnet8) or host-only network (VMnet1) is, that if you're ever going to present the guests to the physical LAN (switching them to bridged) you do not have to reconfigure the network settings as they receive their settings from the DHCP server on the LAN (if there's one present).

Technically it makes no difference if you use the one or the other option. That is all about how it get's its IP configuration but not about the configuration itself.

[AWo]

One thing I missed: you have a test lab and you use NAT. Be aware that using NAT means your lab is not isolated as you might want it to be. NAT hides the system from the physical world, but all packets which are not addressed to the NAT network are send outside. If you want to have it isolated use the "host-only" network or create a custom one where even the host does not participate.

[martit01]

Yes, I'm going to be promoting my 2003 server to a Domain Controller and using static IP. What should my IP address setup be for the follwing:

Windows 2003 Server

IP

Subnet

Gateway

DNS

Thanks,

Tom

[vmroyale · Accepted solution]

Tom,

Any private IP address should be fine, as long as the VMs are isolated from your current environment. As a precaution, I would use an address block that is not used in your current environment.

These are the private address ranges you can use:

10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255

172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255

192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255

I tend to use the 172.16.0.0 range, but that is just my preference.

For your setup, you could do the following for the domain controller:

IP - 172.16.0.2

Subnet - 255.255.0.0

Gateway - 172.16.0.1

DNS - 172.16.0.2

The gateway doesn't really matter in this case, since you aren't doing any routing. For your clients, just increment the last octet of the IP address of the domain controller by 1 - so client 1 gets 172.16.0.3 and client 2 gets 172.16.0.4, etc.

Good Luck!

[martit01]

vmroyale,

Ok, so I'm going with static IP's (and will replicate the example you provided) with Host-Only. Do I need to change any of the default settings in the Virtual Network Editor? When I go into the Virtual Network Editor under the "vmnet 1 host-only" the following default settings are selected:

• Host-only (connect VMs internally in a private network)

• Use local DHCP service to distribute IP addresses to VMs

• Connect a host virtual adapter (vmnet 1) to this network

• Subnet IP: 192.168.152.0 Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0

Since I'm going with Static IP setup, should I unselect the DHCP service?

Thanks again,

Tom

[vmroyale]

Tom,

You can leave the settings alone in the Virtual Network Editor, since only DHCP requests would use that service anyway. You could unselect the DHCP service, but it really won't hurt anything to leave it running.

[martit01]

I'm unable to PING my client XP machine, but from the XP machine I can successfully PING the Windows 2003 server. I'm using a Host-only network adapter and here are my static IP settings

Windows Server 2003, promotted to DC

IP - 172.16.0.2

Subnet - 255.255.0.0

Gateway - 172.16.0.1

Preferred DNS - 172.16.0.2

Domain is Contoso.com

_Windows XP cient _

IP - 172.16.0.3

Subnet - 255.255.0.0

Gateway - 172.16.0.1

Preferred DNS - 172.16.0.2

Member of the Contoso.com domain

Any idea on why I'm unable to ping the client XP machine?

Thanks

[vmroyale]

Are you pinging by name or IP? Also, have to ask, is the firewall turned on on the XP machine?

[martit01]

Yes, that was it - the XP machine had SP2 enabled.... thanks

[martit01]

Sorry.... the XP machine had the Firewall enabled. After I disabled the firewall I was able to successfully ping the XP machine from the Server.

Thanks again

[vmroyale]

Glad to hear you got it working!