Virtual Server 2005 and routing

In virtual server 2005 i have set up a virtual environment consisting of 3 DC's in different sites all being DC's of a central domain and all are global catalogs.

I need to test the subnets now, the current IP range im using is lets say 10.1.20.0 i to test my subnets i need to change two of the servers IP to a different subnet e.g. 10.1.21.0 and 10.1.22.0 but then there wont be any communication since I dont have a router to route the traffic.

So my question is, is there some type of virtual router software that i can use for this or is there a feture in virtual serve 2005 that allows this or is there any way at all that i can test this in my virtual envorinment??

thanks

 

Could you add the server name and IP addresses to each host file.

Andrew

 

I've not played around with the networking side of the virtual server, but if I was in the same position with a real network, I would set one of the servers up as a router.

Any PC can act as a router (after all a router is just a layer 3 connection between networks). To act as a router you can either add network cards, giving each an IP on the network it is attached to, or add multiple IP addresses to the current network card. In your arrangement, I would suggest the latter.

To get a PC to act as a router, you must enable packet forwarding. On older OS, there was a tick box in the TCP/IP properties. In the latest OS you may have to enable the Routing and Remote Access service. You will also need to review your firewall settings. In your test virtual environment, I'd turn firewalling off to start with - assuming you're not enabling internet access at this point (which would be a mistake at this stage I would suggest).

So as an example say you have four networks. 10.1.0.0, 10.2.0.0, 10.3.0.0, 10.4.0.0 (all using 255.255.0.0 subnet mask), and the server on the 10.1.0.0 subnet is to act as the router. That server has IP 10.1.0.1. You'd set up the following:

On 10.1.0.1, add an IP address to the NIC for each of the networks (e.g. 10.2.0.1, 10.3.0.1, and 10.4.0.1) and enable packet forwarding (directly or via Routing and Remote Access service) For now don't set a default gateway (when ready, the default gateway will be the route to the internet or your main network - this I would firewall)

For other servers and clients
On subnet 10.1.0.0 set 10.1.0.1 as the default gateway
On subnet 10.2.0.0 set 10.2.0.1 as the default gateway
On subnet 10.3.0.0 set 10.3.0.1 as the default gateway
On subnet 10.4.0.0 set 10.4.0.1 as the default gateway

They should all then talk to each other.

Personally, as your using virtual server I'd set up the virtual router as an NT4 box, as setting it up to act as a router is easy. However, NIC drivers may be a problem.