> I have a fairly simple home network, to which I have recently added a second subnet to for my virtual > machines. While my primary DNS/DHCP server is a Dnsmasq instance running on my DD-WRT router, my second > subnet is hosted from a machine inside the Lan. On that machine I run multiple virtual machines, and desire > to serve DHCP and DNS information to them from a second Dnsmasq instance running on the first virtual > machine. However I've managed to confuse myself greatly on this subject going through the Dnsmasq archives.
I also have a collection of virtual machines that I use for testing purposes at home. I'm using VMware Workstation. For the majority of virtual machines, I choose NOT to have a second DHCP server but instead configure the virtual machines to bridge (i.e. share) the virtual host's network adapter. These machines will get their addresses from my home firewall which is running dnsmasq. For a minority of my virtual machines, I have a virtual firewall configured with two virtual network adapters one of which is configured as above and the other is configured with a virtual switch to which I can connect other virtual machines. In this case, the firewall provides DHCP to the sub-net defined for the virtual switch. Your configuration is similar to this and I think your problem may be that the gateway machine isn't forwarding packets correctly, i.e. it isn't routing properly. Your 192.168.2.0/24 network should only need one DNS entry and one default gateway (and one DHCP server). To keep things simple, if you want all the machines in the same domain, then configure them all in the same subnet. If you want to isolate the virtual machines, then isolate them completely, i.e. a different domain. While it is possible to span a domain over multiple subnets, the DNS configuration is more complicated. I emulate this configuration (a typical multi-office network) by using multiple virtual firewalls connected to each other with virtual VPN circuits. Each "office" will have a separate virtual switch. VMware handles this configuration very well as the Workstation product comes with eight virtual switches. You didn't mention what virtual machine software you are running, but it may be useful for us to know that to provide further assistance. Also include the host operating systems as well so we can provide more useful examples if necessary. Regards, Brad
