Configuring VMWare on a Laptop

I have been using VMWare Server Linux VMs on my Windows XP laptop for over two years; with both single instance and RAC configurations across numerous VMs. Normally my laptop is connected to my home network (192.168.1.x) so I have been assigning VMs with IP addresses in the same subnet and configuring bridged networks. This worked OK while I was at home but I always had a problem when I was on the road and I could not find a suitable network connection. If all my adapters were reporting "media disconnected" I could not get a network connection between my host and the VMs.

I finally solved this problem (with help from Simon Haslam of Verition) last week. I have installed a Microsoft Loopback Adapter and configured a network address on this. The network address works even if the laptop is not connected to any networks.

The Microsoft Loopback Adapter can be installed using Control Panel -> Add Hardware which launches the Add Hardware Wizard

On the first page answer select "Yes, I have already connected the hardware"

On the next page select "Add a new hardware device"

On the next page select "Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced)"

On the next page select "Network adapters"

On the next page in the Manufacturer drop down select "Microsoft" and then in the Network Adapter drop down select "Microsoft Loopback Adapter"

The Loopback Adapter will be installed.

You can then specify an IP address for the loopback adapter using Settings -> Network Connections. I used 192.168.5.100 for my host; 192.168.5.0 is a new subnet in my network.

I found I needed to restart the laptop at this point for VMWare to see the Loopback Adapter. I when started VMWare Server and selected Host -> Virtual Network Settings and then selected the Host Virtual Network Mapping tab. For VMnet0 I selected the Microsoft Loopback Adapter.

I then started the virtual operating system (Linux) and set the IP address for the VM to 192.168.5.104 in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and /etc/hosts. This seems to be sufficient to use putty, pscp etc to communicate between host and VM.

I have not yet tried this configuration with RAC VMs mainly because I no longer have space on my hard drive for two VMs and the shared storage. Time to upgrade my laptop...