setting up RRAS in vmware workstation

Hey guys,
I am trying to setup a lab for studying on the 70-293/294 exam and I have workstation 7 with 2 W2k3 VM's and 2 W2k3 Ent setup. My scenario is this: I wanted to make 1 w2k3 standard vm my primary VM as a gateway utilizing RRAS to do this but from my reading so far, I don't know if this is possible with RRAS or this should be another product.

I want the 1 W2k3 VM to act as a gateway for my other VM's. So for instance, I setup all my VM's with 1 adapter that connects to a host-only network named VMnet 4. The VM with the RRAS installed, I installed a secondary NIC that connects as a NAT to my host PC. Essentially my end goal, I want my VM's on VMNET 4 to grab their internet through the 1 VM that has RRAS. Is this scenario possible? or is the way Im wanting to use RRAS not valid, and would need something like Astaro to do this?

Lenell

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lenell86

and yes I already know i can change each VM to a NAT network and grab internet but I want all my VM's to pass thru to the one VM i have setup as a gateway.

MentholMoose

Yes, it's possible to do what you want.

Devilsbane

What I did for my network was to set up server01 using NAT (VMnetwork 8 I believe) so it could have access to the internet. I installed a second NIC on this machine that was connected to VMnetwork 9, or any other number that is host only. (VMware will automatically assign addresses via DHCP. If you intend to install your own DHCP server, which I advise that you do, you will want to disable this setting in VMware.)

I then have my entire network set up using network 9 and server01 as the default gateway. So they can all get access to the internet. It did take me a couple hours to do this setup the first time. It is pretty intuitive, but by no means easy unless you've done it before. A good learning experience.

lenell86

Devilsbane wrote: »

What I did for my network was to set up server01 using NAT (VMnetwork 8 I believe) so it could have access to the internet. I installed a second NIC on this machine that was connected to VMnetwork 9, or any other number that is host only. (VMware will automatically assign addresses via DHCP. If you intend to install your own DHCP server, which I advise that you do, you will want to disable this setting in VMware.)

I then have my entire network set up using network 9 and server01 as the default gateway. So they can all get access to the internet. It did take me a couple hours to do this setup the first time. It is pretty intuitive, but by no means easy unless you've done it before. A good learning experience.

That is what I did sir. Lets say my main server VM, server 1, I put 2 NIC adapters in it, 1 connected to VMnet 9(NAT) and the 2nd on VMnet3(host only). I have 3 other server 2k3 VM's, all assigned 1 nic only to VMnet3. The IP addressing scheme I used was a 172.16.0.0/24 scheme. I assigned server1 with IP 172.16.0.10/24 with gateway assigned to itself.

The other VM's I assigned in the same subnet (ex 172.16.0.11, 12, 13, etc.) and assigned their gateway and DNS pointing to server1 (172.16.0.10). I installed RRAS on server 1 and checked that it does have internet access. When I go to the other VM's, they can ping and access resources on server 1 but can't hit the internet, just gives me page can't be displayed.

I know its my configuration on server1 with RRAS. I tried setting up my adapter on server1 that is connected to vmnet9 as a NAT with basic firewall enabled in RRAS and tried connecting the other VM's and it still didn't work.

I guess my question is, with my particular scenario, is RRAS capable of doing this? If so, can anyone give any suggestions to configure this? or am I thinking RRAS is able to do this when it's designed as just a router and not a proxy? what type of software (free preferably) would I need to do this?

MentholMoose

You should configure RRAS to use NAT. Blow away the RRAS configuration (easily done in the RRAS MMC, just right click the RRAS node and disable it), re-run the RRAS setup wizard, choose NAT on the first screen and follow the prompts.

lenell86

MentholMoose wrote: »

You should configure RRAS to use NAT. Blow away the RRAS configuration (easily done in the RRAS MMC, just right click the RRAS node and disable it), re-run the RRAS setup wizard, choose NAT on the first screen and follow the prompts.

Ok, Yea I tried configuring it originally during the wizard as custom then tried to setup NAT manually but didn't work. I'll do what you outlined and go through the wizard. If it works, then I know it does work with RRAS and I'll come back as to why it wasn't working doing it manually as a custom configuration.