Connecting VMWare Player 5 or Workstation 9.0 to Internet

I learned the hard way and many restless nights why VM Player sucks and a serious developer should consider buying VMware Workstation 9.0

The primary difference between VM Player version and WorkStation 9 are the following:

1. Player is free, WS 9 is $250.00
2. Player does not have any OOB networking functionality, WS 9 does
3. Player does not have "snap shots" for VMs, WS 9 does

If you have difficulty connecting your VM Player to internet it is most likely because of the "auto bridging" feature built into VM Player. This feature plagued my system until I got fed up and uninstalled/reinstalled VM Player.

The problem with the "auto bridge" feature is that you are not allowed to configure any settings. If you are unsuccessful the first time connecting the vm to the internet, most likely you have already corrupted the settings of the VM and have to uninstall it (or another option is to repair the settings, but that is beyond my patience).

Here are the steps to install a VM player VM to the internet. If you want to play around with settings to get to know "why" and "how" the vm is connecting to the internet, then download the VM Workstation 9.0 trial. It is available for free for the first 60 days. It will give you the interface and UI needed to change all the networking settings yourself. Otherwise, try to follow my steps. If you have a clean install of VM Player, then you should be good. If the steps below do not work, you will need to uninstall/reinstall VM Player and try them again. I have tested the configuration several times now on Windows 7 and Windows 8 Laptops, so I know they will work for you.

1. Download VM Player
2. Create a new VM with networking card
3. Open up Network and Sharing Center on your Host Laptop
4.  Right-Click the Wi-Fi connection you have, on the Sharing Tab, click "share with..", then select your VM Ware Network card on the drop down. 
5.

Installing SharePoint 2013 Enterprise using Hyper-V on Windows 8.1

I have a Lenovo T410 laptop with decent configuration running Windows 8.1 Preview. It includes the following hardware: Intel Core i5 M540 @ 2.53 GHz, 6 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD.

Tonight, I decided to install SP2013 on my new Hyper-V VM environment using Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012 and SharePoint 2013

For setting up vitalization environment I decided to go with Hyper-V since it is already included in Windows 8.1. Before setting up environment, you must first install the Hyper-V role.
1.       Install Windows 8.1 Hyper-V role (see blog post here)
2.       Setting up Virtual Environment and Installing Windows Server 2012
3.       Installation and Configuration of Active Directory
4.       Installation of SQL Server 2012
5.       Installation of SharePoint 2013 Server 
6.        Install Visual Studio Premium 2012 (x86) with Blend (w/ Office Dev Tools for SP 2013)
7.        Install Office Professional 2013 (x86)
8.        Install SharePoint 2013 Designer (x86)

Installing Hyper-V on Windows 8.1 Preview

Step- By-Step Guide to Installing Hyper-V on Windows 8.1 Preview

Part 1 Installing Hyper-V Role on Windows Server 2012 Enterprise Edition

Caution: Hyper-V only works if your BIOS/hardware/CPU supports vitalization.

If your CPU is either an Intel Core i7 or Core i5 then it is supported. Not all AMD chips are, so make sure you ask your sells rep before you purchase.

1.     First, this setup is “relatively simple” because I chose a particular setup and I repeat it often. I run SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 using Windows 8.1 laptop with a Wi-Fi Internet Connection. I install Hyper-V virtual machine in a single-server farm with SQL Server and the domain controller role on the same virtual machine. This means I can export the VM, import into a different Hyper-V instance and it all just works. Because the whole setup is self-contained, it only requires an Internet access to setup. Once setup is complete, it doesn’t require Internet access to operate. This is great for demos, webinars, conference sessions and other presentations. However, this is not the best practice for a production SharePoint install. For example, you should not install SharePoint on a domain controller in Production. 

2.     By request, here is the hardware specs for my setup: Lenovo T410 with 6GB RAM and Intel Core i5-M 540 @ 2.53 GHz. I’m allocating up to 4GB of RAM to the SharePoint VM, and 40 GB Hard drive space for the VHD. For a developer machine, I would recommended you use at least 8 GB. I’m only using 4 GB now for this demo, but on my other laptop, I will give it 8 GB.

3.      

      Install Windows 8.1 Preview. Once you have Windows 8.1 installed, go to control panel, System, and then Check Windows Updates. After updates finishes, reboot and now you are ready to proceed.

4.      

      To add the Hyper-V feature. Scroll to the top or bottom corner on the right side to open the fly out menu and then choose Settings > Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off. Then check the box next to Hyper-V and install it. Don’t worry about any of the other features I have installed, as I will go over these later.

5.     Reboot your machine when prompted.

6.     Next open Hyper-V Manager now. You will see it listed in the Start - > all Apps section in windows 8.1. I right clicked on this icon and selected to pin to Start so it would always appear. 7.

7.     Install Hyper-V switch, select Internal

Note: this was my biggest frustration with Microsoft since many blog posts and Hyper-V documents want you to add a “External” switch for internet. I found this did not work using a Wi-Fi laptop. I will show you the correct way to do this to enable internet connection to the VM along and shared folder access to quickly share files between your host laptop and virtual machine. For now just be patient, I will go over these steps later for you.

8.     Create an internal Hyper-V network, and give it an obvious name. Do not worry about the other settings you see in the figure below. I will cover that later.

9.