No connectivty for VMware image

blue_harvester · 13 Sep 2007 at 13:49

I have a VM server which is accessible from the company network. However, a Windows XP Professional VM image that I have hosted on the VM server cannot connect to the network. It can ping other machines on the network, and it can be ping'ed from other machines. Any ideas as to what the problem is?

Our network admin is off on leave at the minute so I have to try and sort this myself.

dangermouse · 13 Sep 2007 at 14:15

When you say can't connect to the network, what do you mean?

blue_harvester · 13 Sep 2007 at 16:08

dangermouse said:
When you say can't connect to the network, what do you mean?

I can't connect to other computers on the network through Windows Explorer. Furthermore I can't access the Internet from the VM image.

InSanCen · 13 Sep 2007 at 22:51

try setting the VM image to use NAT, usually works for me.

Should be in the options before you power up the VM image

VMware (winXP as the image), also seems to respond better to static IP's than DHCP.

hope that helps.

marc2003 · 13 Sep 2007 at 23:05

i prefer bridged networking myself. that way the vm image is on the real network like any real pc. and i disable the vmware dhcp/nat services too. they're not needed.

dangermouse · 14 Sep 2007 at 22:03

Reading the original post, to me it would appear that the VM can talk to the rest of the network at an IP level. I would agree with marc2003, bridged mode is better.

Is file and printer sharing installed/enabled in the network settings on the XP VM? What about windows firewall, does it need an exception to allow access to machines on the local network?

blue_harvester · 17 Sep 2007 at 11:54

dangermouse said:
Reading the original post, to me it would appear that the VM can talk to the rest of the network at an IP level. I would agree with marc2003, bridged mode is better.

Is file and printer sharing installed/enabled in the network settings on the XP VM? What about windows firewall, does it need an exception to allow access to machines on the local network?

The VM image is already using bridged networking. File and printer sharing are installed enabled. Firewall is turned off. Furthermore, our network administrator cannot get this vm image to connect to the domain, so it's just left at the default 'WORKGROUP'.

The VM server that hosts the VM images is connected to the domain and can be accessed as normal from other machines in the company. The server is running Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.

As a test I created a new VM image and installed a fresh copy of Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. Once again we can't get it to connect to the domain!! Any ideas why? We have another VM server that has multiple VM images that are all connected to the network successfully!

riddlermarc · 17 Sep 2007 at 12:08

I had something similar happen on my dev VMWare server, the vm's were all working fine and then one day they just stopped getting any network connection :/

In the end I just went and restarted (disabled/re-enabled) the VMWare Network Adapter (vmnet8) on the physical server and it worked fine. No idea why, just did no!

marc2003 · 17 Sep 2007 at 12:22

first thing i'd do is check connectivity between the VM and the server it's hosted on. a simple "ping ip address" should get to the bottom of that. check the network card is configured properly in the VM and there are no problems in device manager.

also in the vmware network editor, make sure the vmnet0 is set to the real network card in the server.....

screenshot from an old thread

blue_harvester · 17 Sep 2007 at 12:52

riddlermarc said:
I had something similar happen on my dev VMWare server, the vm's were all working fine and then one day they just stopped getting any network connection :/

In the end I just went and restarted (disabled/re-enabled) the VMWare Network Adapter (vmnet8) on the physical server and it worked fine. No idea why, just did no!

Tried this and it hasn't worked! Thanks anyway.

blue_harvester · 17 Sep 2007 at 12:58

marc2003 said:
first thing i'd do is check connectivity between the VM and the server it's hosted on. a simple "ping ip address" should get to the bottom of that. check the network card is configured properly in the VM and there are no problems in device manager.

also in the vmware network editor, make sure the vmnet0 is set to the real network card in the server.....

I can successfully ping to and from the VM and the server. Both are resolving DNS names too.

The network card in the VM is properly configured and no problems are showing in device manager.

The vmware network editor on the server was set to "Bridged to an automatically chosen adapter" so I changed this to the real network adapter. This still didn't work, although is a reboot of the server required?

Furthermore, in the vmware network editor I notice that VMnet1 and VMnet8 are both bridged to VMware Network Adapter VMnet1 and VMware Network Adapter VMnet8 respectively. The others are not bridged.

blue_harvester · 17 Sep 2007 at 13:02

Furthermore, I can ping the outside world from the VM i.e. google.com, bbc.co.uk, but I can't go to these sites in IE. IE is set to detect proxy settings automatically.

marc2003 · 17 Sep 2007 at 13:05

don't worry about vmnet 1 & 8. you can even disable them permanently like i do above (along with the vmware dhcp/nat services)- if you're definitely only ever going to use bridged networking mode.

if the dns is working between host and guest, what about the domain controller and guest? also maybe try creating the computer account in active directory before adding it?

blue_harvester · 17 Sep 2007 at 14:43

marc2003 said:
don't worry about vmnet 1 & 8. you can even disable them permanently like i do above (along with the vmware dhcp/nat services)- if you're definitely only ever going to use bridged networking mode.

if the dns is working between host and guest, what about the domain controller and guest? also maybe try creating the computer account in active directory before adding it?

How do I check if the dns is working between domain controller and guest? Do I need a network administrator to creat the computer account in active directory?

marc2003 · 17 Sep 2007 at 15:06

blue_harvester said:
How do I check if the dns is working between domain controller and guest?

well you mention you can resolve dns names already. but is the primary dns server address on the client set to your domain controller's ip (assuming dns is running on the same box). basically everything in the ip settings on the guest should match the settings on the host with the obvious exception of the ip address it's self. dns server addresses, subnet mask and default gateway should all be identical.

blue_harvester said:
Do I need a network administrator to creat the computer account in active directory?

you need the same credentials as you would to add a computer the normal way....

blue_harvester · 17 Sep 2007 at 15:30

marc2003 said:
well you mention you can resolve dns names already. but is the primary dns server address on the client set to your domain controller's ip (assuming dns is running on the same box). basically everything in the ip settings on the guest should match the settings on the host with the obvious exception of the ip address it's self. dns server addresses, subnet mask and default gateway should all be identical.

you need the same credentials as you would to add a computer the normal way....

Everything is the same apart from the Primary Dns Suffix. The server has our domain as it's Primary Dns Suffix, whereas the vm is blank! How do I set this on the vm?

marc2003 · 17 Sep 2007 at 15:40

blue_harvester said:
Everything is the same apart from the Primary Dns Suffix. The server has our domain as it's Primary Dns Suffix, whereas the vm is blank! How do I set this on the vm?

that would be set automatically when you join the domain. you could set it manually but there's no point.

so do you have a domain administrator account then?

blue_harvester · 18 Sep 2007 at 09:12

marc2003 said:
that would be set automatically when you join the domain. you could set it manually but there's no point.

so do you have a domain administrator account then?

I don't personally, but our network admin does. However he has been unsuccessful in getting the vm to join the domain! He changes from Workgroup to Domain, enters his domain admin username and password and then the vm just hangs for a while before giving the following error message:

"The following error occurred attempting to join the domain "ourcompany.com": The network path was not found."

marc2003 · 18 Sep 2007 at 13:15

run nslookup from a command prompt. the default server should be your primary dns server (more than likely running on your domain controller). it should show the ip and the fully qualified domain name of the server....

poor example as this is my router - i'm not on a domain

blue_harvester · 18 Sep 2007 at 15:04

marc2003 said:
run nslookup from a command prompt. the default server should be your primary dns server (more than likely running on your domain controller). it should show the ip and the fully qualified domain name of the server....

Ok, I ran nslookup on my own machine and it work. I also ran it on the server and it worked. However on the vm it churned out the following:

Code:

C:\>nslookup
DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
*** Can't find server name for address 172.25.10.90: Timed out
DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
*** Can't find server name for address 172.25.1.78: Timed out
*** Default servers are not available
Default Server:  UnKnown
Address:  172.25.10.90

>

What's going on?