Hi,

After getting a little hacked off with my hosting package I purchased a little while back I fancy giving it a shot myself. (I'm not looking for any mega performance as it is just for a personal website). What I would like to do is create a VM on my home PC in virtual box and get it seen as a physical PC on the network so it can be accessed from outside. It would also be preferable if I could isolated from the rest of the network meaning if it gets compromised so the worsed that can happen is my VM will be destroyed. The rest of the PCs on the network cannot be accessed via the VM server including the host.

Is this possible, or do you have any other suggestions?

If it is possible, how do I go around getting the VM seen as if it is a physical server and how can I go about isolating it from the network.

Many Thanks,
Matt

I know of know fool proof way to isolate it unless the rest of the systems are on an isolated lan or isolated virtual lan. If the other computers can access the internet at all then they are connected.

It is very easy to create or just download a pre-made virtual appliance or pre-made vm image. A VM is a real computer for almost every respect that a user would need.

Most VM's have options in networking as to exactly how it connects to the host or uses the hosts nic. Bridged, nat and local at the most common choices. The first two could work in your case. I tend to use nat but many prefer bridged. See the vm's doc's. Remember that a virtual nic in nat connects to a virtual router then to your lan then to your router and so forth to the web and back.

Be warned that you may have to use some non port 80. Some home based ISP's don't allow you to use port 80. You also have to know how to use a dynamic IP if you have that also and how to use other ports for a FQDN.