Network Communication between Clients on Two Hosts Using NAT ?

[thomasoatman]

Hello.

I have been using a number of VMs in VMWare Workstation 14 on one machine under a NAT configuration.

I now have a second computer and would like to move some of the VMs to there and work in client-server setups.

I tried setting the Virtual Network Editors on both Hosts to use the same Subnet and assign unique DHCP ranges.

Alas, the VMs cannot communicate across the machine boundaries.

Can this be done with NAT?  (I have lots of snapshots still remembering NAT)

or do I have to switch to Bridged?   (which I had a ton of trouble with under Time Warner)

Thank You !

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi Thomas,

How are you?

You cannot do this with the network set to NAT.

A VMware NAT network is local to the machine and does not cross the host machine boundary.

If you want to have Virtual Machines on both hosts to communicate with each other then the normal solution is for the network connection to be set to bridged I'm afraid.

However one thing that might work for you is to keep the settings at NAT and only forward the port required to a port at the host.

Eg.

Host1 runs at 192.168.0.67

Guest VM on 192.168.44.36 running MySQL and you only need to access MySQL, then forward port 3306 so you can access the guest for Host2 at 192.168.0.67:3306

See also:

Change NAT Settings

--

Wil

[thomasoatman]

Thanks Wil.  

I'm great!   Hope Thailand (or is it back in Holland now?) is treating you wonderfully.

That's what I figured.  

I used to run everything in Bridged until we had all that trouble with Time Warner 😞

I do want to have file browse/copy ability usually;  but maybe the port forward will at least allow access to the SQL servers.

[wila]

Thomas,

Back in Holland since 2014

For file browse / file copy capability and Windows VMs behind NAT you can also port forward RDP, just use another port so you don't loose the remote desktop capability on your host.

Eg. forward VM 192.168.44.36 port 3389 to 4389 and then when you connect add the port to the connection string, when using the example from above, connect to 192.168.0.67:4389 to use remote desktop with the VM.

Personally I would go for bridged, but my setup is quite different.

I do remember your trouble with Time Warner, forwarding ports and using NAT might be easier in your case.

--

Wil