How to configure Vmware server for the host to be visible from the www?

Question

I want to experiment with servers a little and I ran into a problem. The host is Windows XP and the guest is Ubuntu server. I managed to set up openSSH and apache and the site is visible from the host but I cant access it from outside my LAN (I have a router) or inside my LAN (from a different computer of course). How to configure Vmware & XP so I can access my virtual server from the internet?

Answer 1

On your router, port forward the desired port(s) to the IP of the guest machine.  If you can see the VM from your LAN (from machines other than the host) that's all that you need to do.

Since you appear to have issues accessing it from the LAN as well, you'll either have to enable routing on the host to permit traffic to the VM or set up networking in bridged mode on VMWare.  Since you're using XP for the host, I'd suggest bridged mode so that the VM is on the same subnet as your LAN.  That's clearly the easiest way to proceed.

Also make SURE than any Windows or other firewall on the host machine is either disabled or allows traffic on the desired ports from your LAN.

If you opt to do routing on the host machine, be sure to either set up static routes on both the host and your router OR enable a routing protocol such as RIP on the router and the host machine.  I'm not sure if that's a viable option with WinXP though it works great on Server 2003.  One more reason to go with bridged mode networking on the VMWare host!

Edit:  Well, if there's an IP conflict, just give the virtual interface a different IP address.  You can choose the subnet used for the VI and it's IP address.