Separate Host NIC ports from NAT in Workstation Pro 12

[JsDen]

I am trying to setup an individual NAT connected to one NIC port. The reason for this is I need the other NIC port to operate the host machine but not have it included with the NAT as the other NIC port is connected to a VPN that I need the NAT to communicate with.

[Tomrypt]

I believe you do not dedicated a NAT to any one NIC by definition as it will route the traffic out the appropriate NIC based on destination.  I know in the past I have setup a dedicated bridged connection to a VPN adapter when I needed the VM to have an IP on the remote network.  But if you are using NAT I believe it should just route appropriately unless both NIC ports have the same subnet definition.

[JsDen]

Thank you for your response. I did try bridging the virtual port to the specific host, but the problem I have with that is the VPN requires a direct connection to a specific IP. Also, any traffic coming from the guest must be from that same IP in order for specific applications (remote desktop) to work (based on firewall settings). This IP would therefore have to be set on the host and the guest. This is why I chose to have it be a NAT connection so that anything coming from the guest will look like it's coming from the host. Yes, the NAT does route the traffic according to the subnet (allowing me to remote desktop within the private subnet), however there are additional subnets I need to access through the private network and that is being lost at the host. i am able to access the additional subnets if I disable the second NIC, but that is what I'm trying to avoid. I have tried static routes on both the guest and the host with no success. So based on your response I am unable to separate the host NICs in a NAT configuration. That would mean I need to try and figure out what I'm doing wrong with static routing.

[JsDen · Accepted solution]

I resolved my issue. At first I was creating persistent static routes. For some reason this did not work. I created them as non-persistent static routes and i was able to perform the functions I needed to on the other subnets via the guest. I created a batch file to run on the host startup so that the routes will always be there. I would think adding additional features to the NAT environment to allow segregating multiple NICs on a host machine would not be a difficult task for VMware Workstation as host NIC ports on vSphere or other products can be more easily manipulated.