Unique IPs for host and guest in Win10 Hyper-V or VBox?

fatryan

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After dabbling in Hyper-V a bit, I'm planning to setup a simple Win10 VM to use strictly for working from home via RDC. My company runs all our remote traffic through their firewall when connection is established, which I do not like for my personal usage on the machine. So I plan to setup this VM to completely separate my personal OS and the vOS for remoting into my work machine. I'm just a little unclear on how or if I can setup the network connectivity as I want.

As stated, my company runs the RDC traffic through their firewall, but I prefer to keep my personal computer on my VPN as well. There's nothing inherently wrong with using the VPN while remoted into my work machine. It does work. It's just that the VPN speed limitations can sometimes make the RDC sluggish, and I do work that really needs a solid connection. So I want to configure everything so that my host is on VPN but NOT going through the company firewall, while the VM is not on VPN but IS running through my company firewall. I figure in order to do this I will at least need unique IP addresses. At least for the way my VPN server is configured in Merlin, I will need unique IP addresses.

Does this configuration pose any problems? Will I need 2 independent NICs in order to accomplish this task? Can I have 1 system run on the wireless card while the other runs on LAN?

If need be, I could theoretically utilize my laptop for a "second" NIC... Setting up the VM on that instead of my desktop (so not actually a second nic at all). But I'd want to still work at my desktop with the monitors and peripherals, which would mean I'd either need to push all my monitors from my laptops gpu (highly doubt it could handle that) and switch out keyboard and mouse, or I'd need to somehow connect into the VM that's setup on the laptop via my desktop. I don't know enough about VMs to know if the latter is even possible.

And just to clarify, I'm planning to use Win10 Hyper-V or VBox because they're free and don't require installation on bare metal. If one is better than another for my intended use case, please let me know.
 
How does your company's remote access work? If it's a VPN like cisco's, the default setup is to route everything through the VPN when it is connected, so you would not need to configure anything different on the win10 VM.
 
How does your company's remote access work? If it's a VPN like cisco's, the default setup is to route everything through the VPN when it is connected, so you would not need to configure anything different on the win10 VM.
I'm not keen on the specifics, but the connection is established using Palo Alto Network's Global Protect software. Then we just had to point the Windows RDC to the address of my work machine on my company's network. So perhaps this is also technically a VPN. It's just a point-to-point connection as opposed to my expressvpn service configured in my router.

The problem is that if I don't manually disconnect the Global Protect service at home, all my personal internet traffic gets routed through my company... Even when the RDC is shutdown. I know this because they flag a lot of third party websites that aren't necessarily a security threat. So when i go to one of these sites on my own time in my own Windows environment on my desktop at home, I get the firewall warning that my company uses. It's definitely nothing like the standard windows firewall message. I suppose I could verify with IP as well, but I'm pretty confident that the traffic is still being sent through the tunnel and passing through my company's firewall and whatever other services that have running.

I also would prefer to use a clean slate install of Windows in the event that my company monitors what we do outside the RDC. Not that I have and reason to believe they do, just being paranoid I guess.
 
Use Virtualbox, it's easier than Hyper-V in my experience.


You should be able to set up a VM to use it's own IP address separate from the host IP. That should let you exclude it from your personal VPN.


How does your company's remote access work? If it's a VPN like cisco's, the default setup is to route everything through the VPN when it is connected, so you would not need to configure anything different on the win10 VM.
He has a personal VPN set up that he wants to continue to use for the host OS while allowing the VM to access his company's network without VPN.
 
Use Virtualbox, it's easier than Hyper-V in my experience.


You should be able to set up a VM to use it's own IP address separate from the host IP. That should let you exclude it from your personal VPN.



He has a personal VPN set up that he wants to continue to use for the host OS while allowing the VM to access his company's network without VPN.
Are there any limitations i should be aware of with VBox? I more or less work exclusively in the RDC, even my home printer passes through. But certain things like Google Earth don't work well over RDC, so i use that locally as needed. I also use space desk to attach 2 extra screens to my workstation. So as long as that works in the VM, i think that about covers my needs.
 
Oh and is there going to be any conflict with having hyper-v installed with VBox? I previously installed hyper-v for a freenas VM, but I've since deleted the freenas vm and currently have no other vms in hyper-v. I can uninstall the hyper-v feature if needed.
 
Are there any limitations i should be aware of with VBox? I more or less work exclusively in the RDC, even my home printer passes through. But certain things like Google Earth don't work well over RDC, so i use that locally as needed. I also use space desk to attach 2 extra screens to my workstation. So as long as that works in the VM, i think that about covers my needs.

Google Earth should work in the VM as it does on the host. The printer, you might have to mess with some settings to get it to work with RDC in the VM like it does on your host OS, but should be doable.
I have no experience with space desk, just have to try it and see.

Oh and is there going to be any conflict with having hyper-v installed with VBox? I previously installed hyper-v for a freenas VM, but I've since deleted the freenas vm and currently have no other vms in hyper-v. I can uninstall the hyper-v feature if needed.
Hyper-V and VirtualBox do not work together. If you already have Hyper-V set up and know how to create and configure a VM for it, then there's not much reason to remove it just to install something that does the same thing.
 
Well if it's easier and/or offers more features, I'd probably prefer to use VBox. But if not, or if uninstalling hyper-v is somehow more complicated than unchecking a box and rebooting, then maybe i will just still with hyper-v. I just need to be sure i can still have 2 separate IP addresses, one for the host and one for the guest. That's the big thing.
 
two IPs on VirtualBox are very doable. This is a VM and its host as seen from my router
1594408583471.png 1594408856051.png

It's been a while since I tried Hyper-V, but I seem to remember it being more complicated to set up the networking for it to be able to to do this. In VirtualBox it's as easy an changing the VM's configuration to bridged networking and picking which adapter to bind to.
 
two IPs on VirtualBox are very doable. This is a VM and its host as seen from my router
View attachment 260509 View attachment 260511

It's been a while since I tried Hyper-V, but I seem to remember it being more complicated to set up the networking for it to be able to to do this. In VirtualBox it's as easy an changing the VM's configuration to bridged networking and picking which adapter to bind to.
I didn't find hyper-v to be all that complicated, but i did get stuck on the network part initially. I'll probably still look into VBox to see if it seems like a better option.

What is that screenshot from? Is that some kind of app for VBox?
 
I didn't find hyper-v to be all that complicated, but i did get stuck on the network part initially. I'll probably still look into VBox to see if it seems like a better option.

What is that screenshot from? Is that some kind of app for VBox?
No it’s just the management app for my router.
 
Ah, gotcha. Yeah i got one too for asuswrt but i never use it for some reason lol. And it actually works really well too...
 
What you need to know is that when you use a VM it's like having a completely new machine. So it comes up on your network, gets its own IP from your router etc, just like your physical machine. So when you install whatever VPN client your employer asks you to on your guest, it'll be independent of your host and has nothing to do with it
 
What you need to know is that when you use a VM it's like having a completely new machine. So it comes up on your network, gets its own IP from your router etc, just like your physical machine. So when you install whatever VPN client your employer asks you to on your guest, it'll be independent of your host and has nothing to do with it
Yeah I get that. But its not exactly the same a physical machine. I found that out trying to setup my FreeNAS VM to pass through my HBA. I didn't know if I'd run into a similar limitation with the NIC.
 
What you need to know is that when you use a VM it's like having a completely new machine. So it comes up on your network, gets its own IP from your router etc, just like your physical machine. So when you install whatever VPN client your employer asks you to on your guest, it'll be independent of your host and has nothing to do with it
Not necessarily. It usually defaults to nat mode forcing the host OS to route packets to the VM.
 
So I'm setting up the VM now. Installing windows at the moment. It's been installing for like 20-30min already and I'm only at 7% on "Getting files ready for installation". What gives? I directed Virtualbox optical drive to the windows iso...
 
Yeah I'm definitely done with virtualbox. Windows install failed 4 times, including 1 BSOD. And I keep having issues with the mouse and keyboard, including 1 time where it completely disabled them from everything... Host and guest. Only option was the power button. It's also making the host run like a dog. I should have just kept hyper-v installed and used that.
 
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