Due to our internal software, I would like to be able to keep a number of virtual machines which have the first fifteen characters identical, and using the subsequent characters to maintain a unique hostname for each VM. This, of course, means that there will conflicts in NETBIOS. I am not interested in this, because I intend that we will ignore NETBIOS wherever possible, and use TCP/IP networking.
The message you get when you use a host name of greater than 15 characters seems to imply that this is a valid configuration, but will have problems for older machines (which is WfW / Windows 9x). But, of course, I am getting a few errors that I just want to ignore. I would like to ignore the message box that appears before logon, saying "Duplicate name exists.". This is preventing me from being able to automate the VMs.
As a "nice to have", I would also like to be able to use standard Windows networking e.g. \\SERVERNAME\SHARE, without having to use the server's IP address.
Respuesta1
You should find life easier if you explicitly turn off NetBIOS over TCP/IP. You can do this from the WINS tab of Advanced TCP/IP Settings, or via your DHCP server.
Respuesta2
I would also like to be able to use standard Windows networking e.g. \\SERVERNAME\SHARE
This uses NetBIOS. You'd have to use \\Servername.domain.tld\share instead.
On top of that, I think that it would break a lot of applications that don't use FQDN in their queries to other machines. Unless you have a legitimate compelling reason to have the first 15 characters be the same, and it's not just for convenience, I would avoid it at all costs. There's too much legacy code around to ignore it.