If you installed Workstation Pro on a host system that has multiple network adapters, you can configure multiple bridged networks.

By default, virtual switch VMnet0 is mapped to a bridged network. You can create a custom bridged network on virtual switches VMnet2 to VMnet7. On Windows, you can also use VMnet19. On Linux, you can also use vmnet10 through vmnet255.

Important:

If you reassign a physical network adapter to a different virtual network, any virtual machine that used the original network is no longer bridged to the external network through that virtual network and you must change the setting for each affected virtual machine network adapter individually. This restriction can be especially problematic if the host system has only one physical network adapter and you reassign it to a virtual network other than VMnet0. Even though the virtual network appears to bridge to an automatically chosen adapter, the only adapter it can use was assigned to a different virtual network.

Prerequisites

  • Familiarize yourself with bridged networking. See Configuring Bridged Networking for more information.

  • Verify that a physical network adapter is available on the host system. By default, the VMnet0 virtual switch is set to use automatic bridging mode and bridges to all active physical network adapters on the host system. You can make a physical network adapter available by restricting the physical network adapters that are bridged to VMnet0. See Change Automatic Bridging Settings for more information.

Procedure

  1. Select Edit > Virtual Network Editor.
  2. Click Add Network.
  3. Select a virtual switch.

    Workstation Pro assigns a subnet IP address to the virtual network adapter.

  4. Select the new virtual network from the list and select Bridged (connect VMs directly to the external network).
  5. From the Bridged to menu, select a physical adapter on the host system to bridge to.

    Option

    Description

    Automatic

    Workstation Pro automatically bridges the virtual network to all active physical network adapters on the host system. The choice of which adapter to use is arbitrary.

    physical_adapter

    Bridge to a specific physical network adapter on the host system.
  6. (Optional) If you selected automatic bridging mode and you want to place restrictions on the physical adapters that the virtual network adapter bridges to, click Automatic Settings and deselect one or more physical adapters.
  7. Click OK to save your changes.

What to do next

If you want to rename the new network to a name that is meaningful to you, see Rename a Virtual Network.