Networking and MAC addresses

Our IT department needs to better understand how the different networking "modes" appear to the LAN?

Especially what MAC address a Parallels PC appears on the Network. Our PCs have a Machine account on the LAN that's tied I believe the the MAC address.

If I use Shared or Bridged is it the Macintosh's MAC address?
When I use my second Nic card in my Macintosh will the MAC address of that Nic card be used?

Any help or pointers to documentation would be greatly appreciated...martin

 

using shared networking, the VM will not even be visable to the lan, any network traffic will appear to be coming from OSX with the Macintosh's MAC address.

Bridged networking will cause your VM to be visable to the LAN and have traffic will have a different MAC address attached to it. This MAC can be found by doing an ipconfig /all in a command prompt.

 

Along the same lines as the previous question with a different twist.

We are getting ready to intall new Macs into our computer labs (approx 80 boxes). In the past we have used Netboot/NetRestore to create a single image and distribute that image to the machines. As part of the automatic post-config on those boxes the computer name, ip address etc. were setup without the need for a great deal of human interaction.

Our new image will include Windows XP (SP2) joined into Active Directory running under Parallels using the Bridged Ethernet option. Apart from the issues associated with that (which I will post a separate question soon) I would like to find out if using a distribution method like this will result in all the Virtual Machines reporting the same MAC address or will each box create its own address upon bootup?

My apologies if this is wordy but this is all new to me and I want to provide enough detail such that this makes sense.

 

Grant,

I guess I must be dense... In the past did you use Macs or PCs? It sounds like Macs due to the technology being used though.... Also, are you re-sending the image after each use? Or is it a set-up only procedure.

As for the MAC addresses being the same for Windows, you can actually define that inside of the Parallels program. I don't forsee the MAC Addresses all being the same though as I believe it is a slight modification of the existing Hardware card. If they do, I am sure you could create a script to edit the .plist file, where I believe this setting resides.

Hope I made sense... Just finished doing a bunch of study days and taking a test so my brain is fried...

Hope deployment goes smoothly!

 

MAC addresses are taken from the NICs installed in OSX so you should be fine. Of course your Airport and wired ethernet will have two distinct MAC addresses. It's really no difference than cloning a normal Windows machine. Your's making an image of the disk and application but certain hardware attributes are assigned at boot. I hope this helps.

Others can chime in as well in case I'm wrong.

 

I stand corrected after looking at my VM settings.

You can assign a MAC address with Guest Host stopped and editing the VM. Sorry for my incorrect post. Mark my ignorance up to lack of sleep.