Hi, I wat to ask you about this:

Scenario:
-I'm running Debian Lenny with kernel 2.6.26 as Host OS
-I have installed VirtualBox 2.0.6 installed, with Windows XP as guest OS - and some other VM's.
-I've created a bridge networking in my NIC, so my Host OS and my guest OS can get IP's from the dhcp server, in fact, they get different IPS without any problem
-I can do ping between them without any problem, also I've configured some access directory and printing between them using samba and all works ok.

In the Guest OS (Windows):
-I've installed Microsoft SQL Server(port 1433) and Sun Application Server (port 8080)
-from this guest os, I can do telnet 8080

From the Host OS (Debian):
-I can to ping to the guest OS and it works
-I can't do ssh to guest os (ssh 10.10.1.18 8080)
I got: "connection refused"

Questions:
-This "connection refused" could be a bridge issue related?
-it's related to iptables? -at this time I didn't setup anything related to it
-why if I can ping to guest, I can't ssh to it?
-is this a samba issue related?
-what thing should I review first: bridge, virtualbox, iptables, samba?

all the best

SSH normally works on port 22 so ssh 10.10.1.18 should be all you need, unless you have set the port to 8080 as in your example? have you changed the ssh configuration ?