setup mini lab?internetworking issue.

[handa07]

Hello all

i have been learning vmware and virtualisation technology myself from books and online resources hence do not have professional knowledge so i stucked up in problem of having my own little mini lab in my home that i am using for testing purposes.

MY CASE

i have 5 laptops in my home that run windows 7 and so far i i knw most of the things to in vmware workstation if i run it on only one laptop(any) but i am unable to connect all them with each other having running vm windows OS in all wmware 8. all i am trying to is to setup an lab so that i can have working MS Exchange Envionment. The reason- each laptop has max 4 gig ram and in order to have all server & client pc in one laptop virtualised i need alot alot alot RAM which i dont have it so what i did is

1st laptop - windows 7(physical), wmware 8 ( running- DC W2k8 server; windows 7 client)

2nd 3rd 4th laptop - windows 7(physical), wmware 8 (running - W2k8 R2: having mailbox; CAS, HT) so on

now i can make communication easily between the vm running in each laptop but not with between vm's in laptop to another???i know there is to be something with choosing the right type of network configuration? as there are thre types of ways to networking options but i tried one by one all of them but still no ping no response but if i try to ping vm running in laptop 1 to other vm in same laptop then it ping perfectly...

What should i do??

how can i make vm OS to connect with vm OS in other laptop...

Thanks

[milton123]

It's very easy job. You can do it three different way. Like...  

1.Baridge  

2.NAT

3. Host only network

My suggestion is you can use bridge mode in that case you have to configure IP address. As you wanna make a lab, you can use private block IP address and make sure that all of you host and vm are in same network block IP address. Lets you choose 192.168.1.0/24 block IP address and you can use IP 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.254 for your host and VM.

Lets try this..

Cheers, Yours Udin

[louyo]

1. Well, to start I would make sure that all the laptops are on the same subnet. How do they get their IP addresses? DHCP from a router or server? Static?

2. Then, how are your virtual machines configured? I would make them all bridged and give all the exchange servers static IP's. Depending on #1 you should disable the DHCP server in your DC virtual machine if you have another DHCP server for the hardware network. Make sure your static IP's are outside the range of the dynamic IP's.

3. Turn off all firewalls for test purposes.

4. Make sure all hardware machines can ping each other (via IP address) and then test the VM's (via IP address). This is why I use static IP's for all machines in my network, virtual and real.

Once that works, you can make the other servers members of the domain the DC is in. All of your "client" machines will want to make that DC their DNS server and then join the domain if you want to simulate an Exchange server set up in a Windows domain.

If it still doesn't work, break it down to 2 laptops with 1 VM in each and put the results of "ipconfig/all", and the ping commands,

into a file and upload it.

I do this all the time with a couple of W2011 SBS servers, but that is the only Exchange server. IMHO, Exchange is a kludge but that has nothing with getting the machines to talk to each other. Also has nothing to do with VMWare, just networking.

Lou

[handa07]

I realy appreciate all for thier helpful answers, well let me try as explained in ur answers then see if i can work it out and let you all knw about the results.

thanks alot alot...

[handa07]

Just to be bit more clear please i want to clarify following thing:-

What if i chose the following confi

Physical machine 1

WiFi Card - Internet ISP DHCP (not my role)

Ethernet Card - 192.168.0.2        255.255.255.0

VM Machine OS - 192.168.0.2    255.255.255.0

Physical machine 2

WiFi Card - Internet ISP DHCP (not my role)

Ethernet Card - 192.168.0.3      255.255.255.0

VM Machine OS - 192.168.0.3  255.255.255.0

What is i want VM machine to have internet as well??? should i add one more network card and make it as "automatic" so that it takes automatic IP from physical wifi card???which one is suitable to chose bridge, NAT or  host network???

thanks

[WoodyZ]

You cannot assign the same IP Address to more then one NIC, physical or virtual, on the same Subnet!

Suggest you read up on how to properly network computers.

[milton123]

In order to use wireless internet in your VM machine you have add another wireless adapter in  Physical machine 1 and Physical machine 2. Also make sure that second wireless adapter boot in VM machine. Have fun..

Virtual Power

[WoodyZ]

milton123 wrote: In order to use wireless internet in your VM machine you have add another wireless adapter in  Physical machine 1 and Physical machine 2.

@handa07 What milton123 said is only true if you actually what a WiFi Network Adapter to show in the Guest as it does natively on the Host and therefore you'd have to provide your own USB WiFi Network Adapter for the VM and connect it once the OS it's at its Desktop.  If all you're trying to do is get Internet Connectivity to the Guest via the active Internet Connection that is supplied via the Host's WiFi Network Adapter then you do not need to do as suggested by milton123!

[WoodyZ]

What is i want VM machine to have internet as well??? should i add one more network card and make it as "automatic" so that it takes automatic IP from physical wifi card???which one is suitable to chose bridge, NAT or  host network???

How are the Physical Machines networked and how do they connect to the Internet.  In other words describe the Topology of your Physical LAN.

Also I strongly suggest you read the VMware Workstation Documentation, specifically the chapter on Configuring Network Connections.