VirtualBox networking for second domain

My laptop is configured to be part of the Furore domain, where I work. However, I frequently work at a customers' location. With my current customer, your machine has to be on the domain, say 'ABC', otherwise al kinds of services are unavailable.

Since my laptop cannot be configured for two domains, I set up a virtual Windows XP with VirtualBox. For the network I used the default NAT setting connected to my physical ethernet connection. Worked fine, for a while.

Today a network monitoring tool apparently saw a local IP address on the network, the one from the VirtualBox Host. Therefore they automatically shut down my network connection. Problem...

This can be prevented by using the Bridged setting (according to the documentation). So I tried. Didn't work. I suppose because the Hosts' MAC address is unknown to the domain controller, and therefore does not get an IP address from the DHCP server. I could try to contact the servicedesk to register this MAC address. But instead I will ask for a separate laptop from ABC. I'm done with administering things I cannot fully control myself.

Windows 7 needs memory on VirtualBox

Today finally time to install Windows 7 on a virtual machine. Only it ended fairly quickly with a "failed to start" message. Without any clue as to what might be wrong. Searching on the internet did not reveal the answer directly, but someone had made a description of his own installation, mentioning the amount of memory allocated. That rang a bell. VirtualBox's default is 192 MB. That's not enough. I raised it to 1024 MB and now Windows is installing happily.

Clone a virtual machine in VirtualBox

I have a 'standard' virtual machine with XPsp3 running under Sun's VirtualBox. Now I want to test Mule ESB, so I need a clone of this virtual machine to build Mule ESB on. I have the virtual hard disk file in .VHD format to keep it compatible with the company's standard (but less good) VirtualPC.

I started simple by copying the WinXPtest.vhd to WinXPMule.vhd. Then into VirtualBox, New Virtual Machine, use existing harddisk, add the WinXPMule.vhd to the device list, BANG! ERROR! Problem turns out to be that both have the same id.

Luckily some guy Stuart explained on his blog how to do this by way of the vBoxManage.exe. He suggested the use of the clonevdi command, but checking the commandline help of vBoxManage I found the clonehd command. So I entered (include the double quotes):
"c:\program files\sun\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" clonehd WinXPtest.vhd WinXPMule.vhd --format:VHD --variant:Standard --type:normal.
I actually don't know the meaning of the --variant and --type parameters, but Standard and normal sounded quite right. It took some time (copying a file of nearly 4GB always takes some time), but then the command returned with "Clone hard disk created in format 'VHD'. UUID: (some not very interesting GUID)"

Back to the VirtualBox program, New Virtual Machine, use existing harddisk, add the newly created WinXPMule.vhd to the device list - no error this time - and you're done.