Virtual Lab for setting up development environments

[mschlott]

Is anyone using Virtual Labs for setting up development environments?

I had envisioned using a virtual lab to make a copy of a web, app and database server and NAT the addresses to my network for use as a development environment that is an exact copy of production. The main difficulty that I am having is that the servers in the LAB can't access infrastructure services like DNS, or LDAP on my network.

If anyone is doing this, can you walk me through getting access from servers in the VLab to servers on my real network?

Here is what I have done.
On my real network, I have a server named webserver with an IP address of 172.16.12.44. My virtual lab has a static IP address of 172.16.12.80 and uses my DNS servers. My VLab network is set up as 172.30.X.X with DNS pointing to my DNS servers on my real network 172.16 subnet. I have a static mapping for my virtual machine of 172.16.12.44 on the isolated network and 172.16.12.84 on my public network.

Once the VLab is started, I can ping the vlab and 172.16.12.84. I can initiate an ssh connection to 172.16.12.84 but I can't get logged in because the server needs to connect to my LDAP server, which is not in the VLAB.

Open to suggestions.

Thanks
mike

[Gostev]

Hi Mike, virtual Lab cannot access production environment by design... there is complete isolation to prevent any possible issues with affecting production environment. So, the virtual lab must be self-sufficient. Thus, you need to make your LDAP server a part of the lab by backing it up with Veeam, and adding it to your SureBackup job. Thanks.