Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Sharing a Wireless Connection with Virtual Server 2005 VMs

Here's an interesting item (to me anyway).  If you are running Virtual Server 2005 on a computer with a wireless connection, Virtual Server won't let you share that connection with VMs.  You can only share wired connections with VMs.  To get around this, you can install the Microsoft Loopback Adapter, and enable Internet Connection Sharing on your wireless connection.  Then you can create a Virtual Network using the Loopback Adapter, and assign your VMs to that.  One thing to remember though, and it may or may not matter depending on what your are doing with your VMs, is that ICS enables NAT and hands out IP addresses in 192.168.0.0/24 subnet, so your VMs will not be on the same subnet as your physical machine.

The instructions for setting all of this up are on Wade Wagner's blog.  Here is the direct link:

http://www.architectingwith.net/2006/11/30/SettingUpNetworkingOverWirelessWithVirtualServer2005R2.aspx