VMWare Question

[jacksonwalters]

I'm wondering if there's a way to run a VM on my desktop PC, then connect to that VM over my home network with my laptop. It's not very intuitive in VMWare Workstation.

[Gizmo]

I would imagine it can be done in VMWare, though I don't know how to do it.

I've done it with VirtualBox, and it was just a simple network configuration change in VirtualBox, although I had to change my firewall rules to allow the connection through. The Virtual Machine had its own IP address on my network and everything. Unfortunately, it also lost access to my internal networking stuff (including my vpn client) when I did that. Having the vpn connection was more important that being able to see the VM on my network, so I put it back to being only visible within my local machine.

[jacksonwalters]

Apparently VMWare makes a program called VMWare view to handle it. However, you need to have Windows Server 2008 to run it. I'm gonna grab a copy of that and hopefully I can figure it out from there.

[Rondog]

You could always use a VNC application to connect to your VM as though it were elsewhere in the network?

[Áedán]

VNC and MS Terminal Services are two remote control protocols that work pretty well. TS is preferable if you're running Windows guests! It does mean you'll need to run the VM in bridging, so you can access the guest's IP stack.

[piccoLEW]

when you say connect to it, did you want to remote on to it? or just connect to access files?

Have you tried vmware player?

[jacksonwalters]

I want a host PC running n number of OS's and I want to connect to one of those OS's using a laptop, or to all OS's with n laptops, via mah router.

[Áedán]

If the laptop hardware is supported by VMWare ESXi, (or VMWare server, which doesn't need hardware support), that might get you a better way of connecting if you're on the same network. That way you can provision, delete, modify and view guests via the VMWare client. Personally, I'd prefer the ESXi method, as VMWare Server 2 uses a web interface I can't stand!