VMWare Virtual Machine on the DMZ?

[tjvanwyk]

For various reasons, I'm thinking about putting a light-use file server on my normal desktop (WinXP for various Windows-only software I need). I currently have a PIII box that I use for the task but I may go to a virtualization solution (partly to save electricity!) if I can pull the following off.

From what I understand, with my router (Linksys WRT54GS), to get through to the server from the WAN side, I have to specify by IP a host that needs to be available in the DMZ tab of my router's virtual machine.

Is it possible and safe (safe is more important than possible in this case) to put a guest VM on the DMZ while leaving my host machine off the DMZ? And the hundred dollar question: would this require two NICs? (The machine has two NICs but only one wireless. I guess moving this machine closer to the router so I could wire the wired NIC wouldn't be a big deal.)

And the million dollar question: do I really "need" to specify the machine in the DMZ tab of the router's management console? Is there a way around that? In the past I've tried port forwarding on my router but I was unable to get at the box from outside until I put the machine on the DMZ (this may have been a configuration error on my part).

Thoughts? As long as the host and guest have their own separate IP addresses, I should be golden, right?

[tjvanwyk]

Nevermind. Figured out why my port forwarding wasn't working (separate issue), so I don't need to put the box (the host or the guest) on the DMZ in any case.

[savage]

Glad you got it sorted.

For future ref anyway, using bridged network for the VM, the NIC of the host will have two IPs, the host OS will ignore all packets designated for the guest, so setting it as a DMZ would work fine.

I use a similar setup for RDP, I have a Windows VM running inside CentOS and port forward RDP to the guest OS, while other services go to the host.