Hey! I know this is maybe better suited for a VMWare group, but I can’t find one with the whole Reddit fiasco. So I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction or give a bit of advice.

I have VMWare Workstation 16 currently using NAT. This has been working well for a while, as whenever I need to open a port, I just manually do it one by one. But as I’ve been hosting game servers it’s becoming a bit tedious to do one by one and there’s not an option to open ports by ranges using NAT.

I read that Bridged is what is recommended for my use case. And I’ve tried this but can never get it to work. I’ve tried deselecting all but the main NIC too.

I rent a dedicated server, I only have access to one IP with the option to purchase a secondary IP. I’m guessing it’s because of this I can’t get Bridge to work, because I don’t have access to DHCP.

Is my only option to purchase a secondary IP, create a VM for PfSense and have that manage the DHCP? (That’s even if I’m understanding this correctly)

Or would installing something like EXSi achieve what I’m trying to do?

Many thanks in advance!

  • rs5th
    2•1 year ago

    ESXi is a full OS, not sure if you have the option of swapping out the OS on your server. I’m also not sure it will help in this case.

    You are very constrained in what you can do by your networking situation. I think your fundamental problem is that you have a single IP that has to be both the management IP of the server, and also handle all the VM network traffic.

    The ideal topology for this would be firewall using the public IP for it’s WAN interface, then your VM host and VMs all on its LAN interface (using DHCP or not). With another IP address, you could run a firewall as a VM.

    Any way you slice it, I think you’re either an IP or a networking device short.

    • @OpuakeOP
      1•1 year ago

      Hi, thanks for replying! It’s an option that I can do, it would be a pain to start fresh but if it’s not needed then I’d rather not.

      I can get it working at home, but I’m guessing that’s because I have a lot more control over my networking situation so I’d agree with you.

      It’s for that kind of reason that I’m thinking that I might have to purchase an additional IP. Is the topology you mentioned similar to what was mentioned about using pfsense in earlier post?