How to connect a local database in a sandbox environment?

Question

I have the following scenario:

I am very new to Sharepoint 2010 development. In order to practice I had to create a sandbox. Therefore I was instructed to do the following steps:

1. Get Windows 8
2. Create a Virtual machine using Hyper-V, which apparently comes with Windows 8, oob.
3. Install Windows Server 2008 R2 on my VM.
4. Install Sharepoint Server 2010 on the VM.
5. Install Visual Studio 2012.
6. Try to develop custom Webparts etc.

Further there is a SQL-Server database in the local network. I am also supposed to connect to this database. This is where my problems begin. I still did not manage to get Windows 8 and have to use Windows 7, so no Hyper-V. That is why I decided to choose another approach.

On my Windows 7 machine I installed VirtualBox and did all the stuff from the list above in it. But here is the problem. I am able to connect to the database from my Client machine, but the VM is not registered in the domain so I am not able to connect it in my developement environment. So finally my question.

Is it possible to somehow create a local sql server database in my VM an connect it as I would normally do?

Note: Normally I would simply try to connect a Shrepoint list to this database using Sharepoint Designer as described here.

Answer 1

So this is how I solved this problem.

I simply installed SQL Server 2008 on my VM so I was able to create a database which I then could connect to on the very same VM.