Complete VMWare Noob, how does this work?

[soulesschild]

Hey guys,

I'm looking to seriously get down and dirty to learn how to use VMWare server to help me with my IT career (I'm currently 21 so I've got a long way to go ) but I want to use VMWare Server to basically setup my own internal network of VMs so I can build my own network basically. What I want to build is a DNS server, DHCP server, AD server, Mail Server, File Server, and some clients to connect to said servers. However, I'm not sure if I can actually do all of this with VMWare Server...

Reading through the VMWare Server manual, I figure I need to use host-only as my adapter setting to have it's own private network. From my understanding, I have to configure the VMNet1 adapter (which is supposed to be a virtual switch right?), have a DHCP server VM connected to the VMNet1 to server out IPs. Am I getting this right so far?

Now my question is, if I have a DHCP box connected to this, will it serve out IPs that I set in the DHCP server? For example, I want the DHCP server to hand out IPs in the range of 192.168.140.1xx to 19x. Will it just work as long as the DHCP server is configured correctly or do I need to configure the VMNet1 Adapter as well (which I can't seem to find any real documentation or help through the manual or google )

Sorry for the long post and thanks for reading!

 

[Shadowhaxor]

Hey guys,

I'm looking to seriously get down and dirty to learn how to use VMWare server to help me with my IT career (I'm currently 21 so I've got a long way to go ) but I want to use VMWare Server to basically setup my own internal network of VMs so I can build my own network basically. What I want to build is a DNS server, DHCP server, AD server, Mail Server, File Server, and some clients to connect to said servers. However, I'm not sure if I can actually do all of this with VMWare Server...

Reading through the VMWare Server manual, I figure I need to use host-only as my adapter setting to have it's own private network. From my understanding, I have to configure the VMNet1 adapter (which is supposed to be a virtual switch right?), have a DHCP server VM connected to the VMNet1 to server out IPs. Am I getting this right so far?

Now my question is, if I have a DHCP box connected to this, will it serve out IPs that I set in the DHCP server? For example, I want the DHCP server to hand out IPs in the range of 192.168.140.1xx to 19x. Will it just work as long as the DHCP server is configured correctly or do I need to configure the VMNet1 Adapter as well (which I can't seem to find any real documentation or help through the manual or google )

Sorry for the long post and thanks for reading!

Well, if you want your DHCP box to hand out the IP's, you'll want to setup the guest OS's in bridged mode. If you put it in Host only mode, its only going see the private network (guest OS's and the Host), so it isn't going to be able to get IP's by the external DHCP.

 

[Destonomos]

I wrote my senior paper in college on VMware and Server Virtualization in general and the layers and stacks involved. If your wanting a serious job vmware server isn't used that much unless your looking at SMB stuff. Most companies deal with ESX servers which are dedicated machines for vm's. Go to the vmware site and check the blue or white pages that they have for download. Very informative stuff. If your wanting the certifications for vmware check http://www.sadikhov.com/forum/ . A lot of info in on the site as far as the certification is concerned.

hope that helps

 

[soulesschild]

I'll eventually be progressing into ESX, but at the moment, I only have one machine that's able to run VMs until i build my i7 rig and convert current rig in sig to ESX.

I'll take a look at those papers though.


@Shadow
But what if i want it seperate from my network? As in just a private network that can't talk out but can talk internally with each other? I thought that was the point of host only adapter. The diagram they have, I'll post it up from the manual in a second makes what I described earlier a bit easier to picture.

Does what I asked earlier make a bit more sense if it's possible? Basically...

VM DHCP server connects to "virtual" switch which a Linux Samba is also connected to. DHCP server hands out IPs to Linux Samba. Another machine connected to "virtual" switch then tries to access the Linux Samba server given the IP the VM DHCP server provided.

 

[Shadowhaxor]

I wrote my senior paper in college on VMware and Server Virtualization in general and the layers and stacks involved. If your wanting a serious job vmware server isn't used that much unless your looking at SMB stuff. Most companies deal with ESX servers which are dedicated machines for vm's. Go to the vmware site and check the blue or white pages that they have for download. Very informative stuff. If your wanting the certifications for vmware check http://www.sadikhov.com/forum/ . A lot of info in on the site as far as the certification is concerned.

hope that helps

What does this happen to do with the proposed question? He/She wanted to know how to proceed with network connectivity in their VMware guest / host environment. Vmware Server is in no way a replacement for Vmware ESX/ESXi, but it is a good starting place. Don't take this the wrong way, just curious.

 

[Shadowhaxor]

But what if i want it seperate from my network? As in just a private network that can't talk out but can talk internally with each other? I thought that was the point of host only adapter. The diagram they have, I'll post it up from the manual in a second makes what I described earlier a bit easier to picture.

Correct, if you want to have a private network, then Host only will do that. Since you'll have a DHCP server in the environment, that will handle the IP assignments. So this setup will do what you are trying to do.

 

[soulesschild]

Correct, if you want to have a private network, then Host only will do that. Since you'll have a DHCP server in the environment, that will handle the IP assignments. So this setup will do what you are trying to do.

Thanks Shadow! Off to break things

 

[extide]

Here is a simple explanation I just drew up.

Each line coming out of a box represents a network connection.

NOTE: BY DEFAULT! VMWare will provide DHCP for NAT MODE and for HOST ONLY MODE.
ALSO by default it will provide NAT to the NAT network (obviously).
All of this can be changed with the VMWare Network Configuration Editor.