virtualbox.org

I'm having this weird issue where all running Virtualbox guests drops internet connection when a Vmware guest starts.

I've tried this with LinuxMint 15, Windows XP and Windows 7 Virtualbox guests separately and in combinations. They all use bridged network option in order to act like a real clients in network. When a Vmware guests starts, (I have tried with both LinuxMint Debian Edition, MacOSX 10.9.3, Windows 7 Vmware guests) all running Virtualbox guests looses internet connectivity. They don't drop network connections entirely. I can connect to nginx and sql servers running on them as well as network shares on respective ip adresses. Restarting any Virtualbox guest individually or shutting down all Virtualbox guests, quitting Virtualbox completely and relaunching any vbox guest doesn't help if there is any running Vmware guest. If all Vmware processes are quitted, then shutting down all Virtualbox guests, quitting Virtualbox completely and relaunching vbox guests restores connection.

Virtualbox version: 4.3.14
Vmware version: 6.0.4 (Fusion Pro)
OS version: MacOSX 10.8.4

Running two VM platforms together is going to be fraught with issues. They could be a lot nastier than this too.

From the User Manual, 10.3. Hardware vs. software virtualization

Warning
Do not run other hypervisors (open-source or commercial virtualization products) together with VirtualBox! While several hypervisors can normally be installed in parallel, do not attempt to run several virtual machines from competing hypervisors at the same time. VirtualBox cannot track what another hypervisor is currently attempting to do on the same host, and especially if several products attempt to use hardware virtualization features such as VT-x, this can crash the entire host. Also, within VirtualBox, you can mix software and hardware virtualization when running multiple VMs. In certain cases a small performance penalty will be unavoidable when mixing VT-x and software virtualization VMs. We recommend not mixing virtualization modes if maximum performance and low overhead are essential. This does not apply to AMD-V.

I see that the OPs previous discussion (at the end of last year) was also about running two hypervisors at the same time, in that case it was VBox and Parallels. I do hope the OP did not get the impression that Parallels was a special case and that VMWare would be better: to be clear, running any two hypervisors at the same is... a bad thing, not recommended or supported.

If it works, great, if not... get VMware to fix their stuff Same thing applies as last time -- VMware can get the source to VirtualBox and see exactly what we're doing. We can't do the same, and the incentive for us to spend the effort to help non-paying users is less than zero. That's just how it is.