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Enable Automatic Bridging in VMware Workstation 6.5

By Codrut Nistor

Posted in How-to, Software, Virtualization-2

Automatic Bridging is the feature in VMware workstation which allows virtual machines to automatically detect any functional LAN card installed on the physical machine. This means that if a physical machine has two LAN card connected to it and only one of them is currently connected to the network virtual machines will automatically map the virtual LAN cards with the active physical LAN card. This saves a lot of administrative overhead and time and therefore should be configured in most production environments. As a VMware administrator you can configure the application to automatically bridge the virtual LAN cards with the active physical LAN card by following the steps given below:

  1. Double click on the icon of VMware workstation available on the desktop.

  2. On the opened console window click on Edit menu bar and from the list choose Virtual Network Editor.

  3. On the opened box go to Automatic Bridging tab and check Automatically choose an available physical network adapter to bridge VMnet0 checkbox

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  4. Optionally you can click on Add button to exclude any other available physical active LAN card to which you do not want the virtual LAN cards to be mapped automatically.

  5. Once done click on Apply button and finally click on Ok button to make the changes permanent.