Hey guys. I was about to purchase a macbook pro tonight but I was unable to get an answer to this question. I need to run virtual machines on the macbook pro to test software. Here is an example of what I need to do. I would like to run windows server 2k3 in a virtual machine and also run a windows xp virtual machine. Now I dont need to share an internet connection but I need the 2k3 vm to communicate with the xp vm. Follow me? Now I know this can be done with vmware but can parallels do that? Will I be abe to ping the 2k3 vm from the xp vm? I hope to purchase the laptop in the morning so any advice would be appreciated.
Considering that both VM's would have independent IP addresses, this should be as easy as you pinging your host machine from your VM and vice versa. I have done this in Virtual PC and VMware, and the network setup for those programs is no different than Parallels from what I have seen thus far.
Yes, two virtual machines can talk to each other. Each virtual machine can be setup as a "bridged ethernet" which basically creates a virtual ethernet adapter for each virtual machine. When you start the VM, it'll start up as if it were another PC on your network with its own IP Address. When you create the 2 other VMs, it'll look like 3 machines are your network (Mac, WinXP, and Win2003) when they start up. To access Win2003 from XP, just type in the IP Address to Win2003 (make sure you open the correct ports in the Windows Firewall) and it'll access it like any other machine. Be sure you have enough RAM to do this as each VM take quite a bit of memory to run well. I hope that helps. dwonger
BTW, using host-only networking you can create isolated virtual network of between all running VMs and primary OS.
