Migrating from vmware LAN segments

[Grunthos]

Hi,

I am hoping to migrate from VMWare to VirtualBox, and have a VMWare setup that uses several VMWare LAN Segments. ie. provate networks that only connect to other VMs on the same named LAN segment.

I would like to do this migration piecemeal (one VM at a time).

After some reading I am thinking that I should be able to set up dummy ethernet devices on the host (eg. eth_dummy0,...) -- one for each VMWare LAN segment, use fixed IPs on the VMs and connect VMWare and VirtualBox to bridged networks on eth_dummyX (and thereby escape the VMWare LAN segments).

Does this sound plausible?

I want the LAN Segment replacements to be isolated from the host, and am concerned that using a bridged connection will not do that. Is there another way to get VMWare and VirtualBox to talk on a private network?

[mpack]

No, you don't need dummy ethernet adapters.

Networks - physical or virtual - are made by adding connections, not by changing adapters. See chapter 6 "Virtual networking" in the user manual. Read up on internal networking and/or NAT natworking (not the same as plain NAT), depending on whether the virtual network needs Internet access or not. In either case you create one or more named virtual networks and join chosen VMs to them.

[Grunthos]

Thanks for the reply, but you may have missed the point of my post OR I may have missed yours.

I want to have VMWare VMs on the same isolated segment as VirtualBox VMs.

My thinking was to use "bridged" on eth_dummy0, and not assign an IP address to eth_dummy0. Then in theory they should all be able to talk to each other and be isolated from the host.

As far as I can tell from my fairly extensive reading most people talk about interoperation by using bridged in VMWare to talk to a VBox Host-Only adapter. The problem I see with this is that they still have access to the host, which I want to avoid.

[mpack]

Thanks for the reply, but you may have missed the point of my post OR I may have missed yours.

Yes. I didn't realize that you wanted a shared network during the move. I assumed one network would build up and the other would shrink. Not that they would be one network.

My thinking was to use "bridged" on eth_dummy0, and not assign an IP address to eth_dummy0. Then in theory they should all be able to talk to each other and be isolated from the host.

I don't know if bridging to a virtual ethernet card will be allowed, I also don't know if it will accomplish the goal of bridging two virtual networks. Cohabiting with VMWare is not a primary focus around here. But there's no harm in trying.