Virtualbox Support 8 NICs for VM Guest

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 “SFS1”.

Set Mode and enable NIC

When a Mode is set the NIC will be enabled.

C:\Program Files\Oracle VM VirtualBox>VBoxManage.exe

1. Set NIC five to Host-Only Mode and User vboxnet0 (Initially existing Host-Only Net)

   VBoxManage modifyvm SFS1 --nic5 hostonly
   VBoxManage modifyvm SFS1 --hostonlyadapter5 "vboxnet0"

2. Set NIC five to Bridge "Intel(R) 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection"

   VBoxManage modifyvm SFS1 --nic5 bridged
   VBoxManage modifyvm SFS1 --bridgeadapter5 "Intel(R) 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection"

3. Set NIC to NAT Mode

   VBoxManage modifyvm SFS1 --nic5 nat

4. Use the internal VM net “test01”

   VBoxManage modifyvm SFS1 --nic5 intnet
   VBoxManage modifyvm SFS1 --intnet5 "test01"

Configuring NIC

• To use VLAN and some other things in VMs the Promiscuous mode have to be enabled

  VBoxManage modifyvm SFS1 --nicpromisc5 allow-all

• Use other hardware type (Intel Pro/1000 MT Server)

  VBoxManage modifyvm SFS1 --nictype5 82545EM

• Dis/connect cable

  VBoxManage modifyvm SFS1 --cableconnected5 off 

  VBoxManage modifyvm SFS1 --cableconnected5 on

Activate Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise without Internet Connection

Recently, I faced a situation in which I had to activate Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise which didn’t have internet connection. In the earlier days of Windows 2003 there was a Phone Activation option within the wizard. However, in the current edition Windows 2008 onwards the option doesn’t exist.

I am going to show you the steps involved in quickly activated Windows Server 2008 onwards over the Phone using the following command line parameters:

• Start –> Run –> Command Prompt right click and “Run as a administrator”
• Type the following command to retrieve the Product Installation id slmgr.vbs /dti (A pop-up windows will appear with a long string of digits)
• Call the Microsoft activation centers as per your locations from this Microsoft Activation Centers link
• I used the India number 1800 11 11 00 or 1800 102 1100
• Provide the Installation ID to the customer care representative and they will provide a Confirmation Number (A long sting of numbers)
• Type slmgr.vbs /atp (without <>) at the command prompt and you will receive a pop-up that your Windows have been activated successfully
• To confirm your activation type the following command slmgr.vbs /dli

Go to your Server Manager and you will be able to see the Windows Server 2008 R2 activated

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/existing-customers/activation-centers.aspx