Isolating VMware virtual machines from the network

Posted by jetboy on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by jetboy
Published on 2011-03-08T21:52:16Z Indexed on 2011/03/09 0:12 UTC
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I have:

VMware Workstation 7 running on a Windows 7 box (with a single NIC), with multiple virtual machines running a range of OSs. The host box is connected to a WRT54G router running Tomato firmware. The router is acting as a wireless bridge to another WRT54G that's wired to my broadband modem. I can access the VMs externally via VNC using VMware's Remote Display. Over time I've had these running:

a. Using NAT networking (single IP) with port forwarding on the router and a custom port in VMware for each VM.

b. Using bridged networking with static IPs assigned to each VM via MAC address, and port forwarding on the router to each IP running with standard ports.

Either way, the host box, and other physical machines on the network are accessible from the VMs. Is there a way to isolate the VMs from the rest of the network, but still maintain internet access and remote VNC to the VMs?

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