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I am network novice and am confused about how to setup the network in my VirtualBox guests.

My host computer is Windows Vista on which I have installed VirtualBox 3.0.8.

I am trying to setup a ColdFusion development environment. I have 3 guests: a Vista client with my IDE and code base, a Windows 2003 server with IIS and ColdFusion, and a Windows 2008 server with SQL Server 2008.

I need the Win 2003 server guest with IIS to use the code base on the Vista client guest. I envision mapping a virtual directory with IIS to the code base.

I also need the Win 2003 server guest with ColdFusion to be able to use the database on the Win 2008 server guest. I need to enter a path or an ip address in the ColdFusion Administrator to point to the database.

I also want each guest to be able to use my home network resources (printers).

I also want each guest to be able to browse the internet.

My research suggests that I need to create 2 network adaptors on each guest: a Host-only network (for the VBox internal network) and a Bridge network (to access the internet). I have done this and each guest is able to browse the internet. I think my internal network is working, but I do not know how to get each guest to communicate with each other. I am guessing that I need to setup static ip addresses for each guest (so they do not change after a reboot), but got lost in how to do this reading the documentation and web posts.

Suggestions on how to do this in layman terms would be much appreciated.

Thanks

If you are able to use bridged then you do not need host-only.
You will need to setup static address and name resolution but that is done in each guest.
Then unless you have setup a dns server you will need to add the ip address and host name to the hosts file of each machine to be able to use friendly names.

Thanks for the quick reply Perryg.

How do I setup a static ip address in each guest (e.g., Vista)? Also, how do I setup a DNS server in each guest?

Thanks

This actually falls outside the scope of this forum.
Each guest , being Windows you just need to google setting static ip addresses in Windows. There are plenty of help pages that will show you how.

Thanks - I found lots of links with Google on how to setup up a static ip address in Windows and how to setup up a host file in Windows.

Here is a good one on how to setup a static ip address in Windows:
http://portforward.com/networking/static-vista.htm

Here is a good one on how to setup a host file in Windows:
http://geekswithblogs.net/thibbard/arch ... Vista.aspx

I am getting some strange behavior in getting my 3 guests to communicate wtih each other. In summary, each guest (Vista, Win Server 2k3, Win Server 2k8) has a bridge network adapter and a static ip address. I am only able to ping (using static ip addresses) between the following:
- Vista to itself and to Win Server 2k3, but not to Win Server 2k8 (request timed out)
- Win Server 2k3 only to itself and not to Vista (request timed out) nor Win Serer 2k8 (request timed out)
- Win Server 2k8 to itself and to Win Server 2k3, but not to Vista (request timed out)

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

What is the address range of your router?
what are the addresses of the guests?

You can see these by opening a command windows and entering ipconfig /all
These should be the same with the exception of the last octet which should be unique on each machine. Example below:

Router 192.168.1.0/24 (gateway = 192.168.1.1)
Host = 192.168.1.10 subnet 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.1.1
guest 1 = 192.168.1.20 subnet 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.1.1
guest 2 = 192.168.1.30 subnet 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.1.1
Etc.

Also make sure that firewalls are not hampering you from connecting.

Thanks for the great tips Perryg!

First I checked my router and discovered that it's starting ip address is 192.168.1.100 and ending ip address is 192.168.1.149. I had my guests assigned to 192.168.1.31, 192.168.1.32, and 192.168.1.33, so I changed them to 192.168.1.111, 192.168.1.112, and 192.168.1.113. Unfortunately, this did not help and I got the same ping resuls as I previously posted.

Then I checked the firewall in each guest and turned them off and sure enough each guest can now successfully ping the other 2 guests. I suppose I should turn the firewalls back on and configure them to allow specific apps to communicate between each guest. Any tips on this would be appreciated - otherwise, I'll cross that bridge later.

Thanks again!