virtualbox.org

How do I use a VPN on the Virtualbox Host to give access to all the Virtualbox Guest machines?

I am creating a lab setup on amazon ec2. I want to rent a 15GB Windows instance and run Virtualbox inside it. This Virtualbox will have a lab setup with multiple machines - Windwos, Linux, Solaris etc.

What I want is for my users to be able to VPN into the Host windows machine and then be able to access the test lab within Virtualbox. Also, I will need support for multiple concurrent users who can VPN in at the same time.

Basically the Host computer is housing my lab. I only want paying customers to access this lab. The only way I could think of was having my paid customers connect over VPN to my host. Once they are in, they can work on the lab network setup in Virtualbox

That probably will not work. VPN is a point-to-point connection and is designed to simply link one machine to another. You cannot route other traffic through a simple client-server VPN connection.

BillG wrote:That probably will not work. VPN is a point-to-point connection and is designed to simply link one machine to another. You cannot route other traffic through a simple client-server VPN connection.

Sorry, I didn't read carefully enough. VirtualBox is an application which runs under an OS (referred to as the host OS) on a machine (referred to as the host machine). Machines running under VirtualBox are referred to as guest machines (not VirtualBoxes).

If you run your Windows host as a VPN server, a VPN client should be able to connect to this machine and then access your VirtualBox lab (if you set up the permissions properly). They would not be able to VPN directly to a guest OS.

How you set that up has nothing to do with VirtualBox. You have to decide whether you use Microsoft's RRAS or a third party VPN solution and you will have to make sure that the VPN clients have permission to access the VirtualBox application.