I am using Parallels Desktop with the vagrant provider to create headless VM environments to develop locally. I have run into an issue that I can't find the correct IP to connect to my machine's localhost where I have my databases stored on a mysql server. As a work around I have imported my databases directly into the VM, but it's not a great solution as if I lose the box, I lose the database along with it. Ideally I would be able to connect the mysql server running on my machine's localhost where I manage databases with a GUI. I'm using a shared network, and have run "ifconfig" from my machine, where I can see "10.211.55.2" I can ping this address from both my mac and the VM itself, but trying to connect to mysql returns: "ERROR 2003 (HY000): Can't connect to MySQL server on '10.211.55.2:3306' (111)" Can anyone shed any more light on this or point me in a better direction?