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Sharing Files Between Guest and Host Operating Systems
Sharing Files Between Guest and Host Operating Systems
To share files between a host computer and a virtual machine or between two virtual machines, you use the networking features of GSX Server. If you know how to share files between two physical computers on a network, you already know how to share files with a virtual machine.
This section describes four scenarios for sharing files between two systems, either a host computer and a virtual machine or two virtual machines, where
Both systems run Windows operating systems, using Windows file sharing
You are connecting from a Linux system to a Windows system, using smbmount
You are connecting from a Windows system to a Linux system, using Samba
Both systems run Linux operating systems, using NFS, FTP and Telnet
You can apply the same principles to share files between virtual machines.
The following scenarios assume you have set up your virtual machine using NAT networking. Besides giving the virtual machine a direct connection to the host computer's network, NAT networking sets up a virtual network adapter on the host computer. You can use this adapter, which connects to a virtual switch identified as
vmnet8, to communicate between host and virtual machine. You can also connect two or more virtual machines using
vmnet8. For details on NAT networking, see
Network Address Translation (NAT).
In all cases, the user name you use to log on to the system from which you are connecting must be a user on the system to which you want to connect.
To understand how to share files, read the following sections: