70-685 VMWare Lab Setup - Domain Controller

Hello, I've been reviewing the forums off and on for a while, and am not sure that I've seen this particular question/issue brought up, though I suspect that I am being niave in my approach to labbing. My experience is primarily client & not server. I am studying for the 70-685 exam. For labbing, I am using my day-to-day computer to my to host three VMware sessions, one for the 2008r2 server & and two Win7 clients. The Win 7 Enterprise Microsoft Training Kit suggests that using virtual machines would work for completing all the practices in the book, however they also state that the Server 2008 needs to be configured as a domain controller. What I am struggling with is trying to identify a way to segment the virtual environment so that promoting the virtual server to Domain controller doesn't impact my home network. I found when I promoted the virtual server to domain controller I lost internet connectivity on my computer's "working" operating system ( Win 8 ) though the virtual Server 2008 session maintained internet connectivity. My computer is wired via Ethernet to a Netgear wireless router which would normally perform DHCP/DNS functions. Any suggestions on a relatively simply way to handle this or suggestions as to a better approach? It seems to me that even if I used a secondary computer to act as domain controller, it may result in the same net effect on my home network. Yes, I'm confused! Thanks muchly for any guidance or suggestions.

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Mkhan47

Hi Go4Hike,

I had similar problems when revising for 70-680. Check your computer's services in management console, you need to stop the VMWARE DHCP client services and configure your vm's network adapter as internal. This should work. Though I found this out after the exam! I used Oracle's Virtualbox, configured my 2 client W7 PCs and W2K8 server's network adapters as 'internet network', the clients picked the server DHCP without my router (setup as DHCP for my local network) providing IPs.

Hope this helps.

Go4Hike

Thanks for your reply Mkhan47. Your suggestion is similar to what I've come up with as my workaround, which suggests I'm not too far off base.

I am curious as to whether or not your virtual machines had any internet connectivity under your scenario?

After much digging around on the internet, I found a few suggestions that helped me, the most helpful came from a VMWare forum. I changed the network adapters of all the virtual machines to "Host Only" which effectively segmented them from my production equipment, and then I assigned static IP's not within my production network DHCP range to all three VM’s. I was able to promote my server to domain controller and add the two clients to the domain, with no interference to the production environment. Success! The lingering problem is that with this setup, there is no internet access on the VM’s, so while this configuration will let me perform some of the lab exercises, I am relatively sure I won’t be able to complete all of them. I have been playing around with a workaround regarding internet using a second network adapter, but am not really sure if that will be necessary or helpful.

I’m liking VMWare.

Again, thanks for your reply & good luck to you in your studies.

Essendon

Just add a NIC, set it to bridged and you should be able to get out to the Internet. When you set to host-only, the comms are between the host and the VM's only.

Rosco2382

What I did was added a Firewall, pfsense and set up two nics on that one for internal and one to bridge out to my LAN and be able to get out to the internet. It worked well for me so, hopefully you find something to work for you.

JayBlisk

Set all your vm machines ip addresses to static. Make sure the addresses you select are in your routers scope. I set all of my machines in sequence 220, 221, 222,... Easy to remember the addresses that way. Also make the DC ip address the primary dns and the alternate your routers ip. I have my server setup that way with the VMware bundle and a win xp, vista, 2-win7, win8 and three 2k8 r2 servers which one server is the DC and one is IIS Web server. The other server has no role yet. It worked for me. I have no conflicts and internet access on all machines. If you have any questions feel free to ask. Good luck!

JayBlisk

Oh and makes sure you restart your vm's afterwards. Also you may need to flush and register your dns on the machines. VMware can be tricky

Go4Hike

Essendon wrote: »

Just add a NIC, set it to bridged and you should be able to get out to the Internet.

Essendon, thanks for confirming this, this is exactly the route I was going with this, and so far seems to be working very well. I've got two NICS per VM, the first of each is host only with static IP. The second NIC (same physical hardware) is set to bridged and is pulling IP & internet from my router. As I work through the exercises I will see if there are any flaws to this method, but so far am really pleased with this virtual environment. JayBlisk, I am glad to know of your method as well in the event I need it at a later date, as it's good to know more than one way to approach this. This has been a learning curve all on it's own, thanks for the tips / suggestions everyone, this is great. Time to crack open the books again and lab lab lab...

JayBlisk

Good luck! Labbing my butt off too