VMWare

I wanted to be able to access my VMWare (7.0) websites from my host machine (and ultimately, from the outside world)—for testing SLX Mobile 2011 customizations, for one.

I found this old (2006) article: Allow Access to a VMware Virtual Machine(NAT) From Another Computer. But things have changed a little since then. So here are the updated steps:

1. On the machine with the website you want to be able to access, open a Command Prompt, and type in ipconfig. Note the IP Address of the machine.

2. On the same active machine, in the VMWare console go to VM -> Settings…, and on the Hardware tab, select Network Adapter. In the lower right-hand side of the page, change the Network connection setting to Custom: specific virtual network, and select VMnet8 (NAT) from the drop-down. Click OK.

3. In the VMWare console, go to Edit -> Virtual Network Editor….

4. Select the VMnet8 network, and click the NAT Settings… button.

5. Under Port Forwarding, click the Add button, and enter the Host port (e.g., 8080), Virtual machine IP address (from #1), and Virtual machine port (e.g., 80).

6. OK out of all of the boxes, to set the info and automatically restart the DHCP and NAT Services.

If you now type in http://localhost:8080 into the address bar of a browser on your host machine, you should be able to see the (default, port 80) website on the VMWare virtual machine.