Expose Metric Insights on VMware when using NAT networking

When using Network Address Translation (NAT) networking on VMware, you will need to configure port forwarding to access the Metric Insights virtual server in order to reach the Metric Insights server from other machines. Each VMware product unfortunately has a different method for configuring NAT forwarding, but the requirements are the same: ports 80, 443, and 8443 need to be port forwarded from your host operating system to the Metric Insights server virtual machine.  

1. Verify that no services are running on ports 80, 443, or 8443 on the host OS

In order for port forwarding to work correctly, verify that the host OS (which ever machine you're running VMware Player on) does not have any other services that are using ports 80, 443, or 8443.  If you do already have a webserver or something running on ports 80 or 443, you will need to turn them off or choose other ports to map to.

Note, however, if you do something like

1080 = 192.168.220.129:80
10443 = 192.168.220.129:443
18443 = 192.168.220.129:8443

You will need to point your browser to https://<your-ip>:10443 instead of http://<your-ip>:1080 (This is because Metric Insights has built in port forwarding and will try to forward HTTP on port 80 to HTTPS over port 443 automatically.)

2. Setup VMware Port Forwarding

NAT port forwarding is different for each VMware product. Please follow the links below for more information:

Windows

Mac

  • VMware Fusion - Edit the incomingtcp section of /Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/vmnet8/nat.conf and restart nat networking with sudo "/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmnet-cli" --start  (older versions of VMware Fusion reference /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmnet8/nat.conf and sudo "/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/boot.sh" --restart as mentioned at http://www.sharepointjohn.com/vmware-fusion-nat-port-forwarding/ )
  • The [incomingtcp] section of the vmnet8/nat.conf should look like:
80 = 192.168.220.129:80
443 = 192.168.220.129:443
8443 = 192.168.220.129:8443