I am running VPC 2007 SP1 on a windows XP machine sp3. One virtual machine is running windows server 2008r2 and the other is running windows 7. Both are configured local only in the settings and I have joined the Windows 7 machine to the Domain running on windows server 2008 r2. The windows 7 can ping the server fine. But the server cannot ping the W7 machine. Also I want the W7 machine to obtain an IP address from the server which is running a DHCP service. What am I doing wrong?

In my experience, DHCP does not work on the 'internal' VPC network. The only networking that you can really configure is to give them static IP addresses, or use VPC's NAT. Then they can communicate. But DHCP from your virtual DC, no way. (I've really tried). The fact that you cannont ping the W7 machine sounds like firewall. Try turning that off (on both machines for test purposes). Try sharing a folder on your W7 pc, and see if you can access it from the DC. You should be able to (obviously). The fact that you can ping at all shows that there is a two-way IP communication going on.

I would tend to agree wtih the Firewall posibility. I have not experienced issues with running DHCp on the VMs. From the VM's perspective, DHCP should be treated like any other packet. You should make sure that your VMs are both configured/assigned to the same network binding. Since you do want to run DHCP on this network, I would pick the "private" network option. Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

Hi JM, Have you actually made this scenario work? I tried to do exactly that (created a virtual DC, set up DHCP, set client to get network address automatically etc.), and after much frustration, I gave up. I tried this with Virtual Server 2005 too, and had the same problem. I was expecting it to work, because of my experience with VMWare Workstation, where the internal network behaves exactly like it is supposed to. I now have another setup, with VPC on Win7. I have a DC and a client. I haven't even tried DHCP, but I will for the sake of this discussion. That will be the third completely new virtual environment that I have tried DHCP on, and if it still fails, I'd say it can't be done.

OK, I tried it again, and I got the same result. The client that is configured for DHCP does not see the DHCP server, and configures an APIPA address. That's it. I've tried it on 3 different installs, and got the same result every time. IT DOES NOT WORK. Note: The Microsoft course I am doing had me set up this virtual network, and it is interesting to note that in the course material, they tell you to set the address to static. That works fine. PS: I also could not ping my Vista client from my 2008 server, but disabling the firewall on the client enabled the pinging to work, so it's definitely the firewall on the client causing that. Nothing to do with the DHCP, though.

I can tell you that I have definately, 100% confirmed got this to work. With regard to the labs, its common in the setup configurations to use static IPs. that is for the purpose of simplifying the labs. With regard to your firewall comment, if disabling the FW allowed PING to work, then yes...its obviously a component in the issues you have been having. There is nothing special about DHCP. DHCP is udp based broadcast traffic... Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

Can you suggest any trouble-shooting measures I could take to see why my client is not picking up the DHCP server? The fact that both the original poster and myself have exactly the same issue with exactly the same virtual setup could mean that we're doing something wrong setting up the DHCP server. I have set up many DHCP servers in my time, and never had problems. But maybe I've forgotten something?

"With regard to your firewall comment, if disabling the FW allowed PING to work, then yes...its obviously a component in the issues you have been having." The fact that my client's firewall is refusing ping requests does not imply that it will not be able to communicate with a DHCP server. After all, the client is initiating the connection in the DHCP conversation.

For troubleshooting DHCP, you can look at a variety of things. I would start with loaded the DHCP admin, and checking the properties of the server itself. You'll want to take a look at the bindings to make sure that the service is actually listening on the correct NIC. You should also enable logging to see if there is any activity in the DHCP logs, stored in the system32 folder. You can also run a packet capture to see if the packets you are expecting are on the wire. Wireshark is free and very good. Keep in mind also that a DHCP server can only issue IPs when one of both of these conditions exists: 1) you have created a scope for a network segment that the DHCP server has a NIC bound to. 2) you have a scope for a remote segment, and a DHCP relay agent is configured for that segment. For remote segments...the relay agent will populate the GIADDR section of the packet. This is the only method that a DHCP server will know which scope to use to issue leases for a scope that does not match the one that the server's NIC is not bound to. The FW comment was specific to the server, not the client. if the server's FW is online and no exceptions are allowed, then the DHCP packets will not be able to make it thorugh.Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.