VirtualBox with Smoothwall - VPN?

[jondoh]

I have a Windows 2003 server that runs VirtualBox 4.0.2. Currently I have about 3 hosts on it for testing purposes. The server is starting to bog down, and without access to a larger machine with more memory/cpu, I was wondering if I could use a Smoothwall image on each server to create a VPN tunnel between to internal VirtualBox networks.

The first server has a Smoothwall VM, with one NIC connected to the internal "Lab"network. The second NIC is a bridged adapter, and has been given it's own IP address on my real network. The internal network DHCP and DNS is handled by a single AD image, and is in the 192.168.0.1/24 range.

I'd like to duplicate this on a second machine, but have the range 192.168.1.1/24, and then create a VPN tunnel between the two (since they're both accessible by real IPs on my network), to allow one "Lab" network to talk to the other.

Has anyone attempted this? Is this even possible? What hiccups should I be on the lookout for?

[Perryg]

Google smoothwall site:forums.virtualbox.org
145 replies on mine

[BillG]

I have not done this with Smoothwall, but I have set up a site-to-site VPN in RRAS so that machines running on an internal network on Host A can communicate with machines on an internal network on Host B. It worked fine, and a similar setup with different software should too. The router vms had one NIC in the internal network and one bridged to the physical network.

I did not really need to do this for any practical reason. It was just a test bed for a site-to-site configuration.

[jondoh]

After some false starts, I was able to finally get the VPN to work. However it was cumbersome when having to bring one of the physical servers down. I ended up using bridged adapters and connecting NIC2 on each server to a simple hub. Each VM then had a bridged adapter to that NIC only, allowing them to talk amongst themselves.NIC1 on the primary server is connected to a network with access to the "outside", and a smoothwall VM has bridged NICs on both adapters.

[Technologov]

You can take a look at GNS3 project -- it is a cloud network simulator, that allows for interconnecting multiple hosts together, and create single virtual network across them all.

I have recently ported it to VirtualBox engine. Read here.