Hi, I want build a lab at home using virtualized environments for software development duties but with a little more advanced networking than the usual. The hardware I'm going to use is as follow: - i3 560 Processor - 16GB RAM - 4x 500GB HDD for host and guests - 2TB external HDD for backups - USB modem (iBurst) for Internet access - Single hardware NIC I'm planning on running VirtualBox on the Host OS (Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard). I've dumped the Hyper-V idea because there's no USB passthrough and there are too many components in my setup using USB, e.g. UPS, backup HDD and modem. Here is what I have in mind: 1) Windows Server 2008 R2 host OS running only VirtualBox (from hereon called "Host") 2) 4 guests all running Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard (from hereon called "Guest1", "Guest2", "Guest3", "Guest4"), breakdown of the guests to follow. - Guest1: All-purpose / general duties server. Amongst the duties I have in mind is sharing Internet connection, routing outbound and inbound traffic (HTTP, FTP, RDP etc.) to other "Guests", BranchCache, WSUS, DHCP etc. This server needs to be the centerpoint for the rest of the local network. I'm not planning on deploying AD though and I'm looking for a low maintenance solution to reduce administration duties. - Guest2: Backups, storage and print server - Guest3: Production environment for running "live" systems. Will be running IIS, SQL Server etc. This environment will need outside access as I want to host some smallish applications on this machine for WAN access using DynDNS or some sort... - Guest4: Development / Test environment. Will be running IIS, SQL Server etc. Now, I know how to get Guest2, Guest3 and Guest4 up and running but I need some guidance on what I need to use for Guest1? Can anybody point me in the right direction with walkthroughs (or references to guides / walkthroughs)? Please keep in mind that I'm a developer and that I understand my question might be a basic one... :) Your assistance is much appreciated! Regards, Johan.

That seems a bit underpowered with an i3, but the showstopper is the USB Internet connection. If you want to be able to connect to a vm from the Internet, your router vm (Guest1) must have a direct connection to the Internet with a registered public IP. This is not possible with a USB modem. You can only bridge the NIC in a vm to a physical NIC in the host, so your Internet connection must be through a physical NIC in the host machine. This was discussed recently in the VirtualBox forums. In fact it would be best if you had a block of public IPs from your ISP. One to one IP mapping (ie one public IP is mapped to each vm on the private LAN which needs to be accessed from the Inernet) is a much better way to go than port forwarding. Bill

Thanks for you reply Bill. Yeah, I agree the i3 will have to be replaced at some point in time. I've taken the whole of yesterday to play around with VirtualBox and decided to go back to Hyper-V due to performance and stability. I don't know, maybe it was just my n00bness but I had quite a couple of issues where the VirtualBox configuration went haywire and I needed to reboot the entire setup to get it to register its settings properly... Also, VirtualBox VM's felt a bit sluggish on the performance side and that was with only 2 VM's, so today I'm giving Hyper-V a go again. Luckily I found an extra NIC to install in the machine and I can now connect the iBurst modem using its LAN port instead of USB. As for UPS and external HDD, I found a walkthrough to shutdown VM's running on Hyper-V and the external HDD will just have to be connected directly onto the applicable VM as it does register (luckily) as a "Local Disk". The only component that I'm stuck with is the printer, but for now it'll just have to run on the Hyper-V box. Fair trade-off I'd say...? I still couldn't get RRAS to demand-dial the iBurst interface, so I opt to install another VM inbetween to connect to the Internet using ICS and setting up the NAT on the original Guest1 VM. This might not be such an elegant solution but I couldn't get it to run otherwise, so for now it'll just have to work like this. :P WRT the block of public IP's, mmm I'm in South Africa and ISP's here are usually just like "you want to do what?" or "eish that's not possible..." Thanks for your feedback and recommendations!

As I said, the problem with running the NAT router in a vm is that you can only forward traffic to a vm if this vm has an Internet connection with a public IP so that it is reachable from the the net. You cannot forward traffic from somewhere else to the vm router and then re-forward it to a vm on your private LAN. It simply doesn't work. Bill

Oh well, having public access to the "production" server is not critical at this point in time and it's definitely a secondary duty and also it'll probably be cheaper to host through a hosting company than doing it myself. @Bill: Thanks for your assistance! :)