Sep 11, 2014 - Connecting GNS3 to VMware Workstation. A while back I got an email “Here is a suggestion for an article. Launch VMware Workstation Edit Virtual Network Editor By default there will be three networks, the. The new virtual machine is now available in GNS3.Click Edit to change the VM settings: Click the Network Tab: Check the Allow GNS3 to us any configured VMware adapter checkbox then then click OK. The number set here depends on the topologies you are going to use with GNS3.
![Vmware Vmware](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125653444/938681371.jpg)
If you are new to VMWare and the concept of Virtual Machines, or even if you have been working with them for a while but don’t quite understand how the Virtual Machine accesses the network through your host machine, then this article is for you. If you want to take it one step further, and start using virtual devices (such as the virtual interfaces in GNS3) in your virtual machine, I’ll take you there too in a future article. If you just want the bare-bones, then should do the trick.
AssumptionsBut let’s begin with the basics. I will assume that you have installed some version of VMWare for this article – and in particular VMWare Player and that your host machine is a WindowsPC of some vintage. If you use a Macintosh, I’ll try and write an equivalent article sometime. The principles hold true for all versions of VMWare, and similar concepts apply for other virtualization platforms.I’ll also assume you understand the concept of a Host Machine (that’s your PC) and a Guest Operating System (that’s the OS that’s running on your Virtual Machine). Finally, I’ll assume your Host PC obtains its IP address and settings via DHCP.
Your Host PCWhen you installed VWMare Player, your Host PC gained two virtual interfaces. You will see these interfaces turn up in several different places; on your host machine, in your VMWare Configuration and possibly linked to any Guest OS you run.On your host machine, you can see them when you run the ipconfig command, or (for the GUI junkies) in your Network Settings wherever that lives in whichever version of Windows you are running (I’m using Windows Vista on the host machine). These new interfaces will be called VMnet1 and VMNet8. Your regular adapter is known as Local Area Connection. Key Point #1 – Your host PC has some extra interfaces known as VMware Network Adapter VMnet1 and VMware Network Adapter VMnet8. I’ll refer to them as VMnet1 & VMnet8 from now on. Note that these adapters have IP addresses already.
I’ll show you later where those came from.Next, look at VMWare Player. Hi, quality explanations. I’m having a problem with an SNMP agent – not seeing the interfaces on the virtual machine (win2003) – host is Win7. Would you happen to know anything about this?
I’ve googled around to no avail.The SNMP agent normally works fine on a physical Win2003 install. AND it is seeing the virt machine and returning data concerning host MIBs (cpu/disk/mem usage etc.). However (on the VM) it does not even see the interfaces – let alone provide perf data for them. Net connection option is set to bridged.I know it ‘s a very specific question, but I thought somebody might have some ideas.David.
Very good article!! So easy to understandI was wondering if someone could guide me in my problemI have a VM Guest with CentOS running Websphere Application ServerOn the physical host (Windows 7) I have Oracle 10g Database server runningwhat kind of networking setup should I do to allow the Database server URL be visible from inside the VM Guest.basically I want to know if it is possible for me to hook up the Application Server on the VMto be able to communicate with the Db Server on the physical host? Appreciate any kind of help. I’m guessing “9.1:8080/apex/f?p=450::NO:::” is a typo, and should say “0.1:8080/apex/f?p=450::NO:::”If so, then it would seem that your OracleDB server may be set to only accept connectons from 127.0.0.1. You can test this by opening a browser on the Oracle DB machine and trying to browse to::NO:::Changing settings for Oracle DB servers is WAAAY out of my knowledge set!If on the other hand you CAN browse to::NO::: from the Oracle DB machine, then there is some other problem that escapes me.
Excellent article! I Spent so much time Googling on this topic and here it is,written in plain English for anyone to understand.I have a guest OS, Windows 8 running in VMWare Workstation. My Host machine is running windows XP.
I am on a corporate network. My Host is setup to obtain IP from DHCP server. I have done the same setup on my Guest. My VmWare is using VMNet0(Bridged) setup. Our corporate network happily leases IP to my Host(xp) when I log into my laptop, but it refuses to allocate an IP to my Guest OS(windows 8) when I bring up the guest.Whole point of doing this is to connect my Guest to our corporate domain, like I have connected the Host to the corporate domain(Without any issues).Is this achievable?Any thoughts on this appreciated.Thanks. I have Windows 7 computer (HOST) on which I installed VMWare Player 4.
I installed Windows Server 2008 OS in VMWare (GUEST). I also have SQL Server 2005 running on the GUEST OS.I want to connect to the SQL Server in the GUEST from the HOST.I setup VMWare Network Adaptor to Bridged.WHen I do IPCONFIG on HOST, I can see the VMNet1 and VMNet8 adapators.
I can ping both of their IP addresses from the HOST.If I understand correctly, I should now be able to connect to the SQL Server on the GUEST from the HOST by pointing to the IP address for VMNet1 as the server name in a connection script. Eg for example, if I create an ODBC connection on HOST, I select SQL Server and the servername is VMNet1 IP address. Is this true?It doesn’t work. So perhaps I need to open ports on GUEST to allow connection to SQL Server on GUEST? They are 1433 and 1434.
So, I did this. But still no joy, no connection is working.Am I missing something? Appreciate any help! Very good tutorial and one I been looking for, But I need some help in linux guest ubuntu, That hoping Chris or someone else here can help me with, I know how to connect my host.Windows vista. to the guest.Ubuntu. and share the connection with each other using NAT, But what I want to and need to do, Is have the guest ubuntu to become a router?
Or something someone told me, and give the connection I am getting from my guest being online.using a usb modem i connect the guest online, the same modem i use for windows, I have one other modem inside my laptop that came with the system. There should be away to share the internet connection with the host, like you do with the guest, and I been working on it for a good week or longer, Just cant figure it out, so if anyone out there can help and give me step by step i will be more then greatful. TOTALLY AWESOME!!!Pretty clear article, although I need to read it more than one times to get the pointsBy the way, I’ve just set up a VMware server on my Windows 2003 machine.The guest OS I am using is Linux. Nice to read a clear, well presented explanation of this subject. Still I am having trouble with my disconnected network in my Ubuntu 12.04 lts guest. Probably not directly related to this but I am working out every angle. I followed your article and the first thing that is not a mtach is them DHCP status.
When I run ipconfig in the prompt it´s disabled for both VMnet 1 and 8 while it is connected in the Virtual Network Editor. Other problem with the Editor is that I cannot add Bridged networks. The error goes something like this: “blah-blahthere are no un-bridged host network adapters”.
Maybe I should look into my LAN propertiesbut right now just a NAT connection will do to have the internet running in Ubuntu.Great job nevertheless! On the HOST PC (where VMnet1 & VMnet8 live), you should not expect to see DHCP enabled. Your HOST PC actually becomes a DHCP server – it is the guest OS (Ubuntu in your case) that you should be looking to see DHCP addresses allocated to.As far as the Virtual Network Editor goes, again you are probably seeing the correct behaviour. Each physical interface on your HOST PC can only be mapped to ONE Virtual Network Adapter. What you might find though is that that physical adapter may not be linked to an adapter on your guest OS. Check firstly in VMware Player VM-Attached Devices-Interfaces and make sure the VMnet interface that is bridged to your physical adapter is connected.Finally, on Ubuntu, check that there is an interface that picks up the physical adapter – it may be eth0, eth1 or some other eth x.
If necessary, you may have to do a sudo ifdown ethx (replace x with the correct digit) followed by sudo ifup ethxHope this gets you going.CW. I didn’t really get everything you explained, but the basic part and the diff. Between NAT, bridged and host-only was just enough to be sure that this article deserves an AAAThanksBy the way I’m running Win7, on it I have a VMPlayer and Ubuntu as a gust OSI am using my ubuntu as a LAMP machine By default is using NAT configuration.
I need to assign a static IP to my Ubuntu in order to avoid changing the IP when I’m reaching it with SSH, MySql Qorkbench etcWould someone give me a hint where should I change this? Should I change NAT to Bridge?
Do I change networking/interfaces on my Ubuntu or there’s something else to it???Thanks,Luka. If you want devices other than other VMs running on the same Host to be able to see your LAMP server, then you will need to use a bridged interface – which of course is linked to a physical adapter. This physical adapter will have to be “up” even for the host machine to be able to talk to the guest OS (Shameful admission: Before I understood Host only and NAT interfaces, I made myself an RJ45 plug with the Tx pair looped to the Rx pair. When traveling, I used to plug this doctored RJ45 into my laptop’s Ethernet adapter to bring the interface “up” so I could get my Host OS to talk to my Guest OS!!)Now it is quite easy to add an extra adapter to your Guest OS (you Ubuntu LAMP), so it is feasible to have one bridged interface, one NAT interface and one Host-only interface if you want.
This is what I generally do, although occasionally I disable the NAT interface if the Bridged interface is up – because the guest OS gets confused about which should be its default gateway.HTHCW. Great blog entry, I have workstation and your description is 100 times better than the documentation it comes with.I seem to have had a problem since upgrading to workstation 8 whereby my host does not see the guest OS. I allocated my own IP address range in the VMNet1 DHCP settings (192.168.110.x) and set a STATIC IP on one guest OS as I needed for some apps running on it.
However my Host cannot route to the 192.168.110.100 I allocated. (DHCP range starts at.128)Had the problem where VMNet1 & 8 were in the unidentified network section of windows 7 but I used the powershell script that updates the registry to fix that. Still cant see my guest from host. Preventing me running tests ?. Dawood – your problem may be more of a routing issue rather than a VMWare issue. There is no technical difficulty in assigning a public IP address to a guest OS on a bridged interface. You simply give the host PC and the guest OS the same mask, same default gateway, same DNS and your router should be able to handle it.
For example: Assume the IP address range you have been given is a /29 – lets say x.y.z.0/29. Assume that your service provider is using x.y.z.1 as the upstream router’s address. You assign x.y.z.2 mask 255.255.255.248, gateway x.y.z.1 to the host PC and assign x.y.z.3 mask 255.255.255.248, gateway x.y.z.1 to the guest OS.
This post details my experiences getting the GNS3 VM on ESXi to work with 802.1q. I’ve been using the GNS3 VM on VMware Workstation for years, so far I’ve been unable to get virtual devices on the GNS3 VM to link to external networks using 802.1q. From my research I believed the issue to be due to the network interface card / drivers not supporting / stripping the 802.1q vlan tags. Recently I needed this work so I thought I’d give it a go running the.
As long as your using VMware compatible network adapters 802.1q works fine with ESXi.When researching how to present multiple vlans to the GNS3 VM, I discovered some people use a vmnic per vlan. That approach doesn’t scale well, especially if your trying to emulate a complex topology with many vlans. Enabling 802.1q on the GNS3 VMFirst install vlans on the GNS3 VM: sudo apt-get install vlanLoad 802.1q into the kernel: sudo modprobe 8021qTo load it permanently so it survives reloads of the VM: sudo su -c 'echo '8021q' /etc/modules'Adding a VLAN to GNS3 VM for managementYou could use another vmnic to handle your 802.1q connections but I prefer to use a single vmnic where possible. A single vmnic was assigned to each GNS3 VM for both management of the VM and for 802.1q traffic to the VMware vSwitch. This approach requires a vlan be created on the VM at the host level in the below example the interfaces file on GNS3 VM was modified to create a vlan 31: sudo nano /etc/network/interfacesauto eth0.31iface eth0.31 inet staticaddress 10.93.31.8netmask 255.255.255.0gateway 10.93.31.1dns-nameservers 10.93.30.2 10.93.30.3vlan-raw-device eth0Please note, you’ll need to keep a record of your interface configuration as when you update the GNS3 VM the networking is overwritten.I’m hopeful that one day the GNS3 team will prevent the networking configuration from being overwritten during upgrades. With many VM’s this could become annoying each time you upgrade GNS3 you need to reconfigure the networking settings on each VM ?You only need to configure a vlan at the host level for management of the VM. There is no need to add vlan’s that you intend to use with the cloud link as tagged frames passed from the GNS3 cloud to the host’s Ethernet port will be forwarded to the VMware vSwitch, as long as 8021q is enabled on the kernel detailed earlier in this post.
You will also need to ensure the port group is configured to permit all vlan’s. This is achieved by setting the VLAN ID to “All (4095)”Enabling Promiscuous mode on the port groupYou must ensure promiscious mode is enabled on the port group you’ve assigned to the vmnic on the GNS3 VM. This bypasses security to enable frames with mac addresses not assigned to the vmnic (your GNS3 devices will have different mac addresses). Edit the port group and enable as below:Connecting a device on the GNS3 VM to external networkWhen connecting a device on the GNS3 VM to the external network use a GNS3 Cloud.
Connect an Interface on the device to the ethernet port on the GNS3 VM. Connect it straight up to the actual ethernet port, not the VLAN interface. In my case its eth0. From the image below you can see I’m running 2 GNS3 VMS’s and each one has its own cloud connecting to the vSwitch on its respective ESXi host, mine are named HV01 and HV02: Issues with promisiocus mode and Cisco IOSvL2 crashingNotice that my topology has a GNS3 Ethernet Switch between the GNS3 Cloud and the IOSvL2 images? With promiscuous mode enabled and an interface on a Cisco IOSvL2 router connected to a GNS3 cloud, the Cisco IOSvL2 routers would crash fairly quickly with traceback errors. Is a ‘fairly’ elaborate setup with dozens of vlans.
It could be that with promiscuous mode enabled there is just too much causing the image to crash, I’m really not sure but it only took a few minutes before the image crashed.To solve the crashing issue a GNS3 “Ethernet switch” was added between the IOSvL2 switches and the GNS3 Cloud. With the switch inline the IOSvL2 images no longer crash. I can only assume the GNS3 Ethernet switch is acting as a filter between the promiscuous enabled Cloud connection and the IOSvL2 images. Advantages to using GNS3 VM’s on ESXiI’m currently running 2 GNS3 VM’s, one on each of my for capacity and use GNS3 in server mode. My projects can then be left running even after closing down the GNS3 GUI on my laptop. This is achieved by going into the settings for the Project and enabling:“leave this project running in the background when closing gns3”GNS3 scales pretty well with the multiple VM approach. You can even link devices together running on different VM’s, GNS3 uses UDP tunnelling to achieve this so be sure the VM’s can communicate with each other if they reside on different networks.
SummaryI’m glad I put the effort in to switching to running the GNS3 VM’s on my ESXi servers. I can now build bigger, more elaborate lab’s. I also love the fact I can leave the lab’s up and running even after closing down the GNS3 GUI on my laptop.Want to know why my vSphere Web GUI is that cool dark themed colour?