Paul Hill | itFlee.

com

In order for our Guest VMs to communicate with other Guest VMs and our Host computer, we need to create a Host-
only network. To do this, open VirtualBox and click on File > Preferences. Go under t he Network tab and select “Host-
only Networks.” Select the plus button on the right hand side of the screen to create a new network.

When you are prompted by user account control (UAC) select yes and wait for the network to be created.

VirtualBox is creating a new networking adapter that your VMs will use to interface with the Host computer. Once this is
complete, you will see the new network listed under Host-only Net works. Select the network and choose the edit
icon.

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 Paul Hill | itFlee.com

You can see the network settings for our host-only network displayed here. Navigate to the DHCP Server tab and make
sure “Enable Server” is un-checked ( ), and navigate back to the Adapter Tab. An IPv4 Address is
automatically picked from an available subnet on your network but you are free to change this at any time. If you would
like to change it to something else, you need to verify that this network is not already in use on your network. More than
likely it is not, but let’s check anyway to be sure.

Open command prompt by hitting the Windows Key and searching for CMD. Once command prompt loads, enter the
command “ipconfig”. This will list all of your network adapter configurations.

If you have never ran this command before, you need to look for each network adapters “IPv4 Address”. I have found
two:

The first is my new VirtualBox Host-only network. The second is my Hosts IP that is handed out by my home network.
Since I want to make my subnet similar to my host network, I am going to use the following address for my Host-only
network: 192.168.0.1. Close command prompt and return to the VirtualBox Host-only Network Details window. I will
enter this IP into the IPv4 Address field and click “OK”.

Paul Hill | PaulH@itflee.com | itFlee.com

 Paul Hill | itFlee.com

Select OK on the VirtualBox Preferences window and select “Yes” when you are prompted by UAC. Now we need to
connect our Guest VM to our newly created network. To do this open the settings of the VM and navigate to Network.
Notice that we are going to leave Adapter 1 enabled and attached to “NAT”.

Select the Adapter 2 tab and check the “Enable Network Adapter” checkbox. Select “Host-only Adapter” from the
“Attached to” drop-down list and make sure the name is the same as the network you just created (this will not be an
issue if you only created one network).

Click OK to close the Settings window and wait for the settings to save. Now our VM is connected to the Host-only
Network and all that will need to be done on the VM is configure its local VM network adapter settings when we install
Windows.

Paul Hill | PaulH@itflee.com | itFlee.com