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After trying everything I could find on the interwebs, the only way I could get two VMs on my Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V environment talking to each other was by enabling File & Printer Sharing and Network Discovery on the Guest/Public profile.

The problem is, this is on my live web VM (if you're wondering, I need my CI VM to be able to talk to it to do deployments). Basically, at this point, I just need to transfer files from the CI server to the web server. Currently I'm going through the default share (C$) but I can do something else if it makes more sense.

I have the CI VM talking to the DevWeb VM just fine without having to enable this, but they're both on 2012 R2, where the live web VM is just on 2012, so not sure if that is part of the problem.

Also, they're all connected through the physical NIC because I never could get some odd issues ironed out with the virtual NIC/switch.

Is there any other way around this, and if not, what risks am I incurring by doing this?

If needed, I can give you a list of some of the things I tried, but this is a pretty exhaustive list, and I probably won't remember everything, unfortunately (which I know is a bad sign).

Update

It's definitely related to the firewall, because as I tweak the settings under the "Allow an app or feature through Windows Firewall" settings, it affects my connectivity from CI to Web1 (live web VM). But the weird thing is, as I check a setting to get it working, I can go back in and uncheck it, and it still works.

I'm going to play some more with this tonight, and will post screenshots of the settings as I narrow down what's going on.

For what it's worth, this odd behavior is also evident on WebDev, where I've had no issues previously. And for now, the current settings are like this:

WebDev

                            Public    Private
File and Printer Sharing      No         No
Network Discovery             No         No

Web1

                            Public    Private
File and Printer Sharing      No         No
Network Discovery             No         No

But like I said, I've had them set exactly like this before, and changing nothing else but these settings will cause it to work -- and then I can change it back, and it still works. So not sure if something has to propagate, or if changing these settings is triggering something else outside the firewall settings.

Update 2

Ok, there's definitely a delay, because I just checked again (without changing anything), and it no longer works for either server. So whatever is causing this delay is making troubleshooting a major hassle.

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  • You need to tell us how you're trying to get them to "talk" to each other. Web browser on one server connecting to web site on other server? ODBC connection on one server trying to connect to database on other server? Etc., etc.
    – joeqwerty
    Jul 16, 2014 at 5:46
  • @joeqwerty I've added this to the second paragraph. Basically, just file copies at this point over the default share.
    – Jerad Rose
    Jul 16, 2014 at 5:53

1 Answer 1

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The File and Printer sharing setting does not disable anything. This is just a Firewall rule to "allow" it. So I suspect on your "DevWeb VM" you have disabled the Firewall.

I guess you want to "open" up Filesharing only to be possible from the CI VM to the Web VM, and not to the "outside world". You can do this by specifying apropriate Firewall rules, which only allow the IP of the CI VM to access the Web VM.

Also, I really hope that you have another Firewall in front of your (published?) Web VM, so won't "share" the filesharing abilities to the outside world anyways.

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  • Thanks. I've updated my OP with more details. This is just getting more bizarre.
    – Jerad Rose
    Jul 16, 2014 at 15:44

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