how to setup 2008 lab on vmware workstation 9

[alptraum]

I have installed workstation 9 and it's been working fine so long as I let it assign a dynamic Ip to my vm's, however I attempted to setup a proper 2008 lab and this is where I ran into trouble.

my physical router is 192.168.1.1

when I install the first 2008 machine DC1 I select NAT and then attempt to give it an ip address of 192.168.1.100, it dosnt matter what I put in as the gateway 192.168.1.1 it for some reason leaves this blank...and im no longer able to get internet access to this box anymore.

Could some kind soul help me. I've tried playing with bridged and host only settings, but I think it's been to long and the cobwebs are making me forget something super obvious about networking here..do I need to use 2 virtual network cards to set this up ? 1 host only for all my vm's to talk to, and 1 nat or bridged card setup properly to see the outside?

all help greatly appreciated

- Chris

[louyo]

>>my physical router is 192.168.1.1

Set the VM ethernet for bridged and then assign it a static IP address in the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, outside the DHCP server range in the router. You will have to specify the gateway of 192.168.1.1 and DNS as per your provider (should be visible in your router), some routers will do it for you.

Lou

[alptraum]

thanks for the fast reply Lou,

but this box is ment to be a 2008 domain controller, I dont want it using my routers DNS, I want to beable to set active directory and dns up on this itself, but still allow the machine to reach the outside world as well as pass dns/ad services to a 2nd 2008 machine configured to run exchange within my vm network.

- Chris

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

you can achieve this by setting up the VM's with NAT but also assign IP addresses in the NAT (VMnet8 by default) range. I'd suggest you open the VMware "Virtual Network Editor" to see which IP segment is configured and also disable the VMware DHCP service for the NAT network. For the VM's I'd suggest you use e.g. IP addresses 192.168.xxx.3...50 (fixed) and 192.168.xxx.51...100 for your virtual DC/DHCP server's IP range. The gateway address you need to use for NAT networking is 192.168.xxx.2.

You can then configure the VM's DNS server settings point to the virtual DC and forward DNS requests for other domains (e.g. Internet) to 192.168.xxx.2 on the DNS server.

André