VMware GSX Server provides virtual networking components that let you create a wide range of configurations.

If you create a virtual machine with the New Virtual Machine Wizard, the wizard lets you choose any of the common configurations — bridged networking, network address translation (NAT) and host-only networking. The wizard then connects the virtual machine to the appropriate virtual network.

If you create a virtual machine with the VMware Management Interface, the wizard sets up bridged networking for the virtual machine. You can change the type of networking to network address translation (NAT) or host-only networking after you create the virtual machine.

You can set up more specialized configurations by choosing the appropriate settings in the virtual machine settings editor, in the Virtual Network Editor (on Windows hosts) and on your host computer.

On a Windows host, the software needed for all networking configurations is installed when you install GSX Server. On a Linux host, all components are available if you choose to have both bridged and host-only networking available to your virtual machines at the time you install GSX Server.

The first topics in this section give you a quick look at the virtual networking components that GSX Server provides and show how you can use them with your virtual machine. The rest of the section provides more detail on some networking capabilities and specialized configurations.