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Can I determine the IP of a virtual machine using VMware Fusion without actually entering the operating system running on the virtual machine? I'm looking for a menu option, command line, or otherwise that I can issue against the virtual image with the VMware Fusion Software itself.

Thanks - Adron

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If you know the MAC address of the virtual machine NIC you could always try to leverage your host machine's ARP cache, or reverse ARP. – ta.speot.is Dec 31 '11 at 0:59
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Short Answer: No

Long Answer: No but maybe

An IP address is purely the responsibility of an OS. Therefore, the virtual framework that holds the OS has no idea about the TCP/IP stack within unless there are symbiotic additions to the framework such as Hyper-V and VMware's additional guest tools (thanks to todda.speot.is in the comments below). It's not much different than wanting to browse the files on a VM without starting it up first.

Technically, if the VM relies on DHCP, you could search your DHCP server (likely your LAN's router) for the last lease that was handed out to the MAC address of the virtual NIC to get a good idea of what the IP would probably be the next time it launches. That's assuming that same IP wasn't handed out to another device in between when you looked at the lease history and when the VM started up.

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Argh. I was hoping that VMware had some hooks into the OS that would provide that. :( I have no access to the corporate DHCP, thus have no idea since I don't have access to the actual OS either. – Adron Dec 31 '11 at 0:47
A hypervisor can hook in and get the IP address, Hyper V does it with its Guest Additions. And it seems some flavours of VMware will tell you, too kb.vmware.com/Platform/Publishing/images/1006098.JPG - but as WesleyDavid said, it's not really the hypervisor's responsibility to worry about this. – ta.speot.is Dec 31 '11 at 0:58
@todda.speot.is Very good points! – WesleyDavid Dec 31 '11 at 2:01
True that... I was just looking for the easy way around trying to crack the instance. ;) – Adron Dec 31 '11 at 6:12
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