Virtual testing environment DHCP/DNS

I'm trying to set up a basic test environment with VMs on my home PC - I only work in primaries and don't really have the spare equipment or a quiet place to try anything extravagant on site.

All is going well so far; VirtualBox with 1 x DC, 1 x XP and 1 x Win7 Client. My question is this - what is the best way tackle the DHCP/DNS setup? I'm currently using my home router for DHCP and all VM's are bridged straight to router, but without Windows DHCP server I cannot PXE boot (I have very little DHCP options with my router. Router isn't compatible with DD-WRT either :(). The other option is to give all the VM's a private internal network but the clients wont have any internet access.

The only option I can think (and I'm not even sure it is possible) is to give the DC two NICs. Give out DHCP addresses on one of them, and bridge the 2nd to my home router and NAT the two across somehow?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm sure there is a simple fix for this that I'm missing :confused:

No, you're not missing anything. A private network is your only realistic choice in this instance i think. Depending on how much grunt your pc has, you may be able to set up an extra server vm, give it two virtual NICs as you say and install RRAS or whatever they're calling it these days. That server would act as a router to allow your guests Internet access but still keep them isolated from your real network.

:whoo:

Thank you so much! Only working in primaries I had no idea what RRAS was. Dead easy to setup and works perfect! I was just about to get my RaspPi out and make that a permanent DHCP/DNS server across my whole network but this has saved me a lot of hassle.