NIC Teaming/Bridging in the Guest OS (windows 2003 std)

[rjsetford]

Hi,

I have a VM running Windows 2003 std. I would like to stick 2 nics in the VM and team/bridge them together. How do I do this with Windows 2003 thats a VM?

Thanks,

Richard

[AWo]

You want to have them in your guest? Then you have to follow the guests OS guideline, as these NIC's are running in the guest. But why do you want to do that? vNIC's can't break and they're running at maximum speed.

AWo

[rjsetford]

thanks for not actually answering the original question.

[AWo]

Huh, I'll try to stay out of your way in the future.

Please apologize for spending time on this...

AWo

[Phil_White]

Honestly, nobody is going to want to help you when you have that kind of attitude.

What are your goals with two virtual nics? Or is it that you want two physical nics attached to the VM?

[rjsetford]

Hi Phil,

I would like to have each virtual NIC attached to a separate physical NIC with each physical NIC attached to a different switch which would be powered by different UPS etc etc. Basically, some basic redundancy.

I managed to suss out the problem myself, just click on each of the NICs you want to bridge, right-click and select 'Bridge Connections'.

As for attitude, all I wanted was a simple answer to a simple question but thanks for your input.

Richard

[cmanucy]

If you'd follow VMWare best practices, you'd probably realize you should do this at the ESX level, at which point ALL VM's benefit from the redundancy. But you seem to have everything under control, so good luck with that.

----

Carter Manucy

[rjsetford]

This is for a specific VM which is separate from the other VMs running on the ESX host.:)

[Phil_White]

From your description you are trying to have reduncancy through yoru physical switches. Each pNic you have attached to your VM goes to a different pSwitch?

[RParker]

He did answer the original question, perhaps you could strive to ask a more clear question.

You have to READ the RTFM, then maybe you can find the answer. The Guest OS determines the drivers for your NIC, in this case VM Ware tool drivers do not offer Teaming, you can only use Windows 2003 Load Balancing.

[RParker]

As AWo pointed out this is an OS level feature, not a ESX/VM Ware feature.

VM's are not any different than a physical host. Everything you can do to a VM you can do with a physical guest, and he was trying to tell you the pitfalls of trying to do this within VM Ware.

And the OS can load balance, but you won't get much teaming, because it doesn't provide for failover.