Unable to bridge multiple physical NICs to my VM

[Eli Moulin]

I'm running VMWare Workstation 17.6.4 build-24832109 Pro on HP Z2 G9.  This host machine has an I350-GE-4t-X4 PCIe 4 port network card.  I need to bridge these 4 NICs to the VM but have been unsuccessful doing so.  When I add a virtual NIC to the VM and choose the Bridge option, there is no way to select which physical adapter to bridge to, like in previous versions of VMware Workstation.  I have used the Virtual Network Editor to create 4 new networks (VMnet2 - VMnet5) and selected the "Bridged to" option for each and selected a different physical adapter for each network:

VMnet2 bridged to I350 #1

VMnet3 bridged to I350 #2

VMnet4 bridged to I350 #3

VMnet5 bridged to I350 #4

I then added 4 virtual NICs to the VM and used the "Custom" option to map them respectively:

Virtual NIC1 custom mapped to VMnet2

Virtual NIC2 custom mapped to VMnet3

Virtual NIC3 custom mapped to VMnet4

Virtual NIC4 custom mapped to VMnet5

To me this looks correct, however within the VM the 4 virtual NICs aren't mapped to the 4 physical NICs I previously configured.

I believe there may be an issue within the Virtual Network Editor.  When I open up the VNE I can see the 4 Virtual networks I created (VMnet2-VMnet5) but the "Type" for all show as Custom with the option (Host-only) selected.  That's not what I setup.  When I click "Change Settings", then the 4 Virtual Networks show correctly as "Bridged" with the correct physical adapter selected.  But soon as I click OK and open the VNE again, they revert back to Custom with Host only.  It only shows correctly after I select Change Settings.  How can I get VNE to actually save what I'm configuring?

Any assistance for this issue would be much appreciated!

[Doriiaan]

The behavior you're seeing in the Virtual Network Editor typically occurs when Workstation loads the configuration without full administrative privileges.  Even if the elevated configuration is set to Bridged, it often shows "Custom (Host-only)" in the main VNE window. Therefore, the discrepancy you're observing is primarily a UI refresh issue rather than the bridged mappings being disregarded.

 

However, it's important to take a step back and determine what you truly need within the VM.   Bridging four physical network interface controllers (NICs) sounds logical if you expect the VM to act like a device directly connected to four separate physical networks. However, if you only need the VM to communicate between its interfaces, VMware’s NAT mode provides that functionality without requiring individual physical adapters.

 

NAT in workstation can map multiple virtual NICs to the same outbound path while maintaining full connectivity within the VM. Unless the VM needs to appear as four distinct hosts on the physical network, NAT may provide the same result with a much simpler configuration.

 

If you want a clear technical overview of how NAT works, theses references explains the logic cleanly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation

https://pingmynetwork.com/network/ccna-200-301/nat-overload-cisco

(just general networking info)

 

If the VM requires true L2 adjacency with four external networks, then "Bridged" is the correct setting. In that case, the usual fix is to run vmnetcfg as an administrator and recreate VMnet2–5.

But if the goal is mainly connectivity, NAT is lighter, more stable, and avoids these VNE quirks.

[richard612]

The physical host is running Windows?

[RaSystemlord]

I don't know, but is there a reason to have them in Bridged? Wouldn't NAT for all of them be enough? They can interact with each other just fine, if they are in NAT (and have access to Host network devices and internet).