Is it possible to configure NAT on vmware ESXi?

[itaios1984]

     Hello everyone,

I'm new to Esxi5 technology, i read a lot about the networking basics but still can't figure out how to configure NAT.

The scenario that i'm trying to test is basically 2 machines connected to virtual network A

and 3rd machine that connected to virtual network B which is connected to the physical NIC  .

my host has only one Physical NIC with Internet access.

please can anyone guide me, i didn't find it "friendly" as in VMware Workstation.

thanks a lot.

itai

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Welcome to the VMware Communities forums.

You'll need at least 2 public IP addresses for this.  ESXi does not include a NAT option.

For your VMs what you would typically do is configure a firewall VM with one virtual NIC configured with Internet access, and the other virtual NIC connected to your DMZ or LAN network.  The  DMZ or LAN network can be on a virtual switch that is not connected to a physical NIC port.

For your ESXi host I would suggest putting it behind a firewall / VPN device.  It's not ideal to have the  host directly connected to the Internet.

[itaios1984]

thank you for your answer.

eventually what i did was configuring Vswitch 0 containing VM1 attached to VNIC1 with internet access (through proxy server in my case)

and another vSwitch1 (internal) with no physical nic attached which contains the internal VM2 and VM3 +  VM1 with the internet connection.

than on the VM1 installed with microsoft server , i added a second VNIC2 attached to the internal network.

than "Internet Connection Sharing" on the VNIC1.

eventually i also had to configure the Proxy settings for internal VM2+VM3 in the browser settings.

is this an akward configuration?

thanks a lot !

itai

[RParker]

itaios1984 wrote:

eventually i also had to configure the Proxy settings for internal VM2+VM3 in the browser settings.

is this an akward configuration?

thanks a lot !

Not if it works!