VirtualBox and Networking

DeaconFrost

DeaconFrost

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Sep 6, 2007
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I'm having a small issue with VirtualBox, and hopefully someone will know the answer right away. In Virtual PC 2007, when you run a Windows guest machine, it grabs an IP address from your local network. This is handy for me, because I can run a Server 2003 or XP guest, and join the domain. However, I'd prefer to use VirtualBox, so I can run a Linux guest as well. How would I configure VirtualBox's network settings so they act like VPC2007, in that they grab an IP from my local network, rather than a random one from it's internal NAT address?
 
Its a little tricky, and took me a minute or two to figure out as well.

I'm going from memory here, so please forgive the crudeness of this response -- if you can't get through it i'll post more detailed instructions when I get home and am sitting in front of the software.

On the settings for your Virtual Machine -- go into the networking tab. Its probably set for NAT. You want to set it for Host Interface Networking. At some point (before or after doing that, I forget) you'll have the option to Add a network card. It might be an icon with a picture of a network card and a + sign. You basically just have to name it, and it should create a New network card on your HOST machine. Go into your HOST machine's network properties, and select both your REAL network card, and the new VIRTUAL network card it created. Right click on one (with both selected) and there should be an option about creating a bridge. Do that. Now your HOST (real) machine has 2 network cards that are bridged.

Then go back into the Network tab on your virtual machine, and it'll be asking which network card to use for the Host Interface Networking, the only option will probably be this new Virtual card you created. Choose that.

Then you should boot into your Virtual machine, and make sure the VMTools thing is installed. It should install the drivers for this new network card that your Virtual machine detects, and you'll get an IP Address from your router (or whatever), instead of an IP address relative to the NAT.

The Virtualbox Download page has the user manual: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
 
Wow, I'm impressed you were able to interpret all that, because I read it and was like "This doesn't make any sense...." lol ;). Glad to help!
 
I just went through this with VirtualBox last week. Direwolf nailed it, wish I had those directions last week when I spent some time figuring it out. :p
 
Direwolf, you should give yourself more credit. Those steps were spot on, in terms of what I had to do.
 
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