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CHAPTER 3 Installing and Configuring VMware ACE Manager
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In a Windows virtual machine, shared folders appear in My Network Places (Network
Neighborhood in a Windows NT virtual machine) under VMware Shared Folders. For
example, if you specify the name Test files for one of your shared folders, you
can navigate to it by opening My Network Places > VMware Shared Folders > .host
> Shared Folders > Test files.
You can also go directly to the folder using the UNC path
\\.host\Shared Folders\Test files.
You can map a shared folder to a drive letter just as you would with a network share.
Note: To see shared folders displayed in this way, you must update VMware Tools in
the virtual machine to the current version. If your guest operating system has the
version of VMware Tools that shipped with VMware Workstation 4.0, shared folders
appear as folders on a designated drive letter.
In a Linux virtual machine, shared folders appear under /mnt/hgfs. So the shared
folder in this example would appear as /mnt/hgfs/Test files.
To add a new shared folder to the list, click Add. On a Windows host, a wizard guides
you through the process. On a Linux host, a dialog box appears. Enter the required
information, then click OK.
Provide the following information:
• The path on the host to the directory you want to share. Type in the full path or
browse to the directory.
Note: If you plan to deploy a virtual machine that uses shared folders, be sure to
specify a path that exists on your end users’ computers. If the path does not exist,
end users see an error message when they try to browse to the folder.
• The name for the directory. This is the name that appears inside the virtual
machine.
• Whether the shared folder is enabled. You may want to add a folder to the list
without enabling it immediately. You can then enable the folder at any time by
clicking its name in this list, clicking Properties and enabling the folder in the
Properties dialog box.
• Access options for the shared folder. You can give the current virtual machine
read-only access, or read-write access. Access to files in the shared folder is also
governed by permission settings on the host computer. For example, if you are
running VMware ACE as a user named User, the virtual machine can read and
write files in the shared folder only if User has permission to read and write them.