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right now I'm toying around with VM Ware stuff and not having any pcs then my laptop I decided to run an ESXi Server inside of VWmware Workstation. I was just curios to see if the server would allow to setup and run a VM. And after some tweaking there it was, working like a charm. Okay not that fast but startin' the VM from vSphere and "opening a console" gave my direct access to that VM.

Now I wanted to see if I could ping the host from the VM (VM Workstation Network is set to "host only"). And it worked, at least from the VM I could ping the ESXi server and the host. From the host I am able to ping the ESXi Server but I can't ping the VM!

I asked myself anyway where the VM got its ip adress from. At the DCHPs IP there is at no machine after all. I even tried to use that DHCP adress for my Host and it didn't work out.

You can see my settings from the screenshot here (it's pretty wide so just a link): http://yfrog.com/n4desktopfeop

The only thing that got me thinking was when I once changed the ESXi's IP from 192.168.92.137 to 192.168.0.137. I still was able to connect to the ESXi server via its new IP but when I tried to run the VM console from vSphere I got an error after a while that said "couldnt connect to 192.168.92.137:903".

So vSphere connects just through a port of the ESXi server to the VM?!? Could I setup a Linux VM to use it as a DHCP that I'd at least have control over the IPs that are given. Which lowest end linux could be used for this purpose?!?

Thank you for your time! :)

DK2000
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  • I would just change network card to bridged and set the IP in the same range as the host. Also try to ping with the firewall disabled. Win 2008 servers block pings by default, not sure if this applies to Win 7 aswell. – Espennilsen Oct 19 '10 at 07:38
  • Hey thanks Espennilsen, once both firewalls were disabled and the VMware Workstation settings set to bridged I was able to ping the machine from the Host and vice versa! :) I have one question left though, how do the "end user" connect to these VMs? I was able to create a "remote invitation"file, mail it from the VM to the host and get remote access without vSphere once I approved that access. For local file-based VMs there is VMware Player but which VM Tool does let you connect to the VMs on the ESXi like an end user? – DK2000 Oct 19 '10 at 08:34

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Hi in response to you comment on your question, if you enable remote desktop and add the users to the remote desktop users

Important note: Remote desktop is only included in the Professional, Business, or Ultimate versions of Windows. Home editions do not have remote desktop.

To get to the configuration page, you can either right-click the Computer icon and choose properties, or you can type in system into the start menu search box, and then find the entry for System. alt text

Now you’ll want to click the Remote Settings link on the left hand side: alt text

Now you can finally turn it on:

alt text

To connect from another Vista / Win7 PC on the same network, click the bottom radio button. If you need to connect from an XP/2k machine, click the “Allow connections from computers running any version of Remote Desktop” radio button.

Don’t worry about setting up firewall rules, Vista or Windows 7 does that for you automatically.

Note: This should work for both Windows 7 and Vista.

trozz
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  • Thanks Trozz, RD is way faster than "Remote Assistance" and it works fine. I managed to get the VM to autologin with a password so I could start the remote desktop after the VM is powered on in vSphere. I also included shutting down / reboot via shortcut in the VM to be able to shut it down right from RD access (otherwise you just can log off, shutdown/restart buttons ain't available while connected trough RD). – DK2000 Oct 19 '10 at 11:27
  • Yeah sadly that's something Microsoft didn't think about, RD will work if no user is logged in, so id remove the auto login as this will just use resources that could be allocated elsewhere – trozz Oct 19 '10 at 12:23