VirtualBox - setup more than 4 NICs

tags: virtualbox

Virtualbox supports up to eight network cards. If you look into the *.vbox you will see that there are already preconfigured but disabled. Unfortunately inside the VBox GUI we could only configure up to four. I will show how to get and configure the other.

You have to use VBoxManage to get the other network cards. After the option will always be the NIC Number count one to eight. Here I will use five and the name of the machine that will be configured is network-test.

set mode and enable NIC

!!! when a Mode is set the NIC will be enabled.

1. Set NIC five to Host-Only Mode and User vboxnet0 (Initially existing Host-Only Net)
VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nic5 hostonly
VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --hostonlyadapter5 "vboxnet0"

2. Set NIC five to Bridge eth1
VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nic5 bridged
VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --bridgeadapter5 "eth1"

3. Set NIC to NAT Mode
VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nic5 nat

4. Use the internal VM net test01
VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nic5 intnet
VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --intnet5 "test01"

configure NIC

- To use VLAN and some other things in VMs the Promiscuous mode have to be enabled
VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nicpromisc5 allow-all

- Use other hardware type (Intel Pro/1000 MT Server)
VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nictype5 82545EM

- Dis/connect cable
VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --cableconnected5 off

- Show vm info
VBoxManage showvminfo "Ubuntu_12.04.2"

Ref:
https://www.eanderalx.org/virtualization/8_network_card_vbox