Networking Trouble

Discussions about using Windows guests in VirtualBox.
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Daniel_Scott1990
Posts: 1
Joined: 16. Aug 2014, 12:36

Networking Trouble

Post by Daniel_Scott1990 »

Hi Everyone,

I'm a communications engineer and have little experience with virtualbox, at work we use Hyper-V or VMWare. As a cheap way of doing research at home I've installed Virtualbox and created a Svr 2008 Guest and a Windows Client Guest. I want to boot the Client through WDS/MDT and test the answer file I'm currently writing for work to make 7 Ultimate a deployable solution for some of our more senior users but can't figure out the networking for virtualbox at all.

Currently both my Guests are running on the Internal Network which I've named the same as my Domain Name but the Client won't even pick up an IP address from the Server through DHCP. I've looked at the manual provided and just can't work out how to set up an internal network correctly. Also I haven't the faintest idea how to configure VB through the command prompt, currently my Host comes back saying VBManage is an unrecognised command.

HELP PLEASE!!!! :D :D :D :D
gg99
Posts: 44
Joined: 19. Sep 2011, 08:27
Primary OS: MS Windows 8
VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
Guest OSses: vista, w7, w8.1, w8.1 embedded pro, xp(being phased out)

Re: Networking Trouble

Post by gg99 »

I assume you mean vboxmanage which by default is not available in command line until you changed your Path to include
<virutalboxInstalledDIr>


as for networking (https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html) internal networking and bridged network may work.
your choice of internal networking is very good as long as none of the vm need to talk with the internet.

there is not much to config- just be sure to use the same network name, no need of command line messing.
all vm connected to internal network with the same network name will communicate with each other and nothing else. the network may seem strange - no default gateway, but is /24 network ( netmask 255.255.0.0)
in my experimental vms, I can ping the other vm on the same internal network without issue.

which of the following is causing you trouble?
Internal Networking is similar to bridged networking in that the VM can directly communicate with the outside world. However, the "outside world" is limited to other VMs on the same host which connect to the same internal network.

Even though technically, everything that can be done using internal networking can also be done using bridged networking, there are security advantages with internal networking. In bridged networking mode, all traffic goes through a physical interface of the host system. It is therefore possible to attach a packet sniffer (such as Wireshark) to the host interface and log all traffic that goes over it. If, for any reason, you prefer two or more VMs on the same machine to communicate privately, hiding their data from both the host system and the user, bridged networking therefore is not an option.

Internal networks are created automatically as needed, i.e. there is no central configuration. Every internal network is identified simply by its name. Once there is more than one active virtual network card with the same internal network ID, the VirtualBox support driver will automatically "wire" the cards and act as a network switch. The VirtualBox support driver implements a complete Ethernet switch and supports both broadcast/multicast frames and promiscuous mode.

In order to attach a VM's network card to an internal network, set its networking mode to "internal networking". There are two ways to accomplish this:

You can use a VM's "Settings" dialog in the VirtualBox graphical user interface. In the "Networking" category of the settings dialog, select "Internal Networking" from the drop-down list of networking modes. Now select the name of an existing internal network from the drop-down below or enter a new name into the entry field.

You can use

VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --nic<x> intnet

Optionally, you can specify a network name with the command

VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --intnet<x> "network name"

If you do not specify a network name, the network card will be attached to the network intnet by default.

Unless you configure the (virtual) network cards in the guest operating systems that are participating in the internal network to use static IP addresses, you may want to use the DHCP server that is built into VirtualBox to manage IP addresses for the internal network. Please see Section 8.35, “VBoxManage dhcpserver” for details.
there is bit more discussion from oracle blog: https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... 5972,d.cGE
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