Confused!! (Getting my Virtual Lab Setup )

Honky007

Hi all,

I'm really confused as to how to get my virtual lab setup.


I downloaded Microsoft VirtualPC and installed it on my Work PC and have installed 4 Windows 2k3 servers onto a 1Tb External drive. They're all working great.

My confusion comes to setting up stuff like DNS and DHCP scenarios.

I've assigned them all static IP addresses for now (10.1.1.10 - 10.1.1.13) with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.

What should I put as the gateway? I don't have a virtual gateway / router....or do I?

How do I seperate my Virtual World from the rest of the real network here at work? I can only imagine what would happen if I brought up a DHCP server at work and started giving out IP addresses! Uh-Oh.

I guess my dream would be to have a seperate Virtual Realm where I can setup DHCP and DNS servers and play around with stuff without ever touching my works network.

Does that make sense? I really want to start labbing up all the stuff I'm seeing in the CBT nuggets so it starts to sink in, but I'm at a loss as to how to connect it all together...

Thanks so much ...this site is really helpful..

Hope someone might be able to point me in the right direction.

Many thanks,

Honky

chamo

hi maybe this can help ,

open your VIRTUAL PC CONSOLE than go to the SETTINGS than you find a hole list of hardware component click on NETWORKING than you see adapter 1, 2 , 3 and so on at the first adapter than choice de network that you want ( the one that you mean is LOCAL ONLY ) if you want to set your server not locally you can choice for the name of your network card, after you do that click ok and that's it , do it with all others OS that you install.

and no , you don't have to put a gateway because it is not connectet to a router.

Let me know if it’s work.

Markie

Chamo is correct.

When you click >Settings and >Networking, you get a variety of options of how you want that particular virtual machine to behave.

For most scenarios, set all your virtual machines' NICs to "local only" so as to not interfere with the real network (the one the host machine is on).

If for some reason, you want one or all of your virtual machines to have access to the real network or to have internet access for example, then set the virtual machines' NICs to the name of your NIC on the host machine. There should be no need to configure default gateways etc as this information would already have been set on the host machine's NIC.

The second scenario can become a little confusing in a test environment as you are constantly moving between a "virtual" and "real" environment.

If you go with the first scenario, there is no need for a default gateway as all your virtual machines are on the same subnet. The only time you might configure a default gateway would be if you installed the "Routing and Remote Access Service" on one of your virtual machines (which you will not need to do unless you start creating virtual machines that have IP addresses from different subnets (e.g. 192.168.x.x, 10.1.x.x etc)

JBrown

Make sure that you enable ICMP ping /echo on the physical workstation's NIC card, In case if you won't be able to ping /resolve dns/ share drives with in the Virtual Servers.

Honky007

Heya Guys,

Many thanks for all your responses - I really appreciate it!

I'll let you know how it goes!

surfthegecko

Just out of curiosity how did it go.

I know when I first setup a couple of virtual servers and needed them to talk to the internet I got endless IP Conflicts when choosing the hosts NIC as the networking card.

The only way I could stop it was by using the NAT option.
This then caused a problem with the virtual NAT'ted machines seeing my host machines properly.

Just interested to know how you got on.

Honky007

Heya dudes,

I've been studying DNS at the moment so I did the following:

I went into the Microsoft Virtual PC console and set the network adapters of my 4 virtual servers to "Local Only". Then I just used Server1's IP address as the default gateway in the IP settings for all the other machines. Seems to working ok for now

Installed DNS on Server 1 and now it all is working hunky dory for the moment!

NSlookup is working Ok.

Woot! So good when the penny drops!!

I'll let you know how it goes with DHCP..