Anyone have any experience or good links they've used to setup a vitrual box environment

need to configure
Windows 7
RHEL App Node
RHEL DB Node
DNS Server (thinking RHEL)

all the vms need to be able to talk to one another. Not sure how complex this is -

To get the VMs to talk to each other, give them bridged adapters, rather than using the NAT adapter that VB defaults to. By using bridged adapters, they can be assigned or receive DHCP addresses within your network.

Look under Settings-->Network for each virtual machine, then click "Advanced" to choose the specific device. If several network "Adapter Types" are listed under "Advanced," you may have to test them one by one to find the one that works.

Other points: Set the RAM for each VM yourself. VB defaults to lower RAM settings than I like, especially if you are planning to use a GUI. Also, unless you have a compelling reason not to, use the dynamic virtual hardrive--that means that, even if you specify an eight GB HDD, VB will only use the amount of disk space actually required, dynamically resizing the HDD footprint as needed.

If you are setting these up on Linux, depending on your distro, you may need to download and install the kernel headers and possibly sources (it's been a while) in order to use "Guest Additions"; "Guest Additions" are not required, but they make life easier. Not all distros include kernel headers in a default install.

It's probably worth your while to download the VB User's Manual. VirtualBox also has a set of how-to articles on its wiki.

This looks like a pretty good tutorial: http://www.makeuseof.com/pages/how-to-use-virtualbox

After you set up your first VM, you will find that VirtualBox is pretty easy to use.

Good luck.

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Just remember that VB will ONLY expand the virtual hard drive, it will not shrink it. So if you load the VM up with 10 GB of installation or data files, the virtual drive will expand by 10 GB to hold them, but it will never shrink back to its previous size, even if you delete the files.

I'm just throwing that out there so you stay aware of what you load onto the VM's drive. It's often a good idea to set up a shared folder with the host OS and access any big files you need directly from there, rather than copying them into the VM, to keep the virtual drive from permanently growing when you don't actually need that extra space on a long-term basis.

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Thanks. I've never shrunk a virtual HDD, so I've never noticed this.

If I recall correctly, Guest Additions are needed to set up a shared directory between the host and guest.

You can also set up an internal network where the VMs are all talking to each other - and not on the external physical network. If you have concerns about 'exposing' a development server that may be a viable solution. The only real catch is that you may need an additional VM running as a gateway/firewall/dhcp server with one 'interface' in the internal network and one either bridged or NAT'd to the outside world - this would allow your 'isolated' VMs to interact with one another, and still be able to connect to the Interweb for things like software updates, etc.