Create more than 4 Network Cards in Virtualbox

Create more than 4 Network Adapters in Virtualbox

I've seen this post from - https://www.eanderalx.org/virtualization/8_network_card_vbox. I re-posted it here on my blog for reference purposes, so that I don't have to search for it the next time I need it.

Virtualbox supports up to eight network cards. If you look into the *.vbox you will see that there are already preconfigured but disabled. Unfortunately inside the VBox GUI we could only configure up to four. I will show how to get and configure the other.

You have to use VBoxManage to get the other network cards. After the option will always be the NIC Number count one to eight. Here I will use five and the name of the machine that will be configured is “network-test”.

Set Mode and enable NIC

When a Mode is set the NIC will be enabled.

1. Set NIC five to Host-Only Mode and User vboxnet0 (Initially existing Host-Only Net)
   

   VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nic5 hostonly
   VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --hostonlyadapter5 "vboxnet0"

2. Set NIC five to Bridge eth1
   

   VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nic5 bridged
   VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --bridgeadapter5 "eth1'

   NOTE: In Windows, use the actual Network Adapter Name instead of eth1

3. Set NIC to NAT Mode
   

   VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nic5 nat

4. Use the internal VM net “test01”
   

   VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nic5 intnet
   VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --intnet5 "test01"

Configuring NIC

• To use VLAN and some other things in VMs the Promiscuous mode have to be enabled
  

  VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nicpromisc5 allow-all

• Use other hardware type (Intel Pro/1000 MT Server)
  

  VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nictype5 82545EM

• Dis/connect cable
  

  VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --cableconnected5 off

All Options

The help of VBoxManage contains much more options than I've showed