Specifications
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232
VMware GSX Server Virtual Machine Guide
address. Your network administrator can tell you whether IP addresses are available for
your virtual machine and what networking settings you should use in the guest
operating system. Generally, your guest operating system may acquire an IP address
and other network details automatically from a DHCP server, or you may need to set
the IP address and other details manually in the guest operating system.
If you use bridged networking, the virtual machine is a full participant in the network.
It has access to other machines on the network and can be contacted by other
machines on the network as if it were a physical computer on the network.
Be aware that if the host computer is set up to boot multiple operating systems and
you run one or more of them in virtual machines, you need to configure each
operating system with a unique network address. People who boot multiple
operating systems often assign all systems the same address, since they assume only
one operating system will run at a time. If you use one or more of the operating
systems in a virtual machine, this assumption is no longer true.
If you make some other selection in the New Virtual Machine Wizard and later decide
you want to use bridged networking, you can make that change in the virtual
machine settings editor (VM > Settings). For details, see Changing the Networking
Configuration on page 238.
Network Address Translation (NAT)
NAT gives a virtual machine access to network resources using the host computer’s IP address.
A network address translation connection is set up automatically if you follow the
Custom path in the New Virtual Machine Wizard and select Use network address
translation.
Virtual machine
Virtual
Ethernet
adapter
Virtual Ethernet switch
(VMnet8)
NAT device
DHCP server
Network