What do you mean doesn't need separate hardware? You can connect to a Win share from a TKL Fileserver VM OOTB, just need to mount it (plus make the mount point if it doesn't already exist). As long as there is a LAN/ethernet (virtual or otherwise) connection to the machine with the Windows folder you want access to it will work fine.
Seeing as you still need to edit fstab to make the shares auto-mount and new shares need to be added to fstab too, where is the advantage in using VBox shared folders over CIFS? Perhaps I'm missing something but just seems like an extra step (ie installing/configuring VBox tools) to acheive the same ends to me. I guess that's why you requested inclusion of VBox tools? But still if the same ends can be acheived OOTB as is... Is there some other benefit in using VBox shares/tools that I'm overlooking?
FWIW if you mount a Windows share with cifs and want to have full read/write as a user other than root then you also need to supply a UID and/or GID like is in your VBox fstab line (probably the same ones you used would work fine).
I don't quite understand..?
What do you mean doesn't need separate hardware? You can connect to a Win share from a TKL Fileserver VM OOTB, just need to mount it (plus make the mount point if it doesn't already exist). As long as there is a LAN/ethernet (virtual or otherwise) connection to the machine with the Windows folder you want access to it will work fine.
Seeing as you still need to edit fstab to make the shares auto-mount and new shares need to be added to fstab too, where is the advantage in using VBox shared folders over CIFS? Perhaps I'm missing something but just seems like an extra step (ie installing/configuring VBox tools) to acheive the same ends to me. I guess that's why you requested inclusion of VBox tools? But still if the same ends can be acheived OOTB as is... Is there some other benefit in using VBox shares/tools that I'm overlooking?
FWIW if you mount a Windows share with cifs and want to have full read/write as a user other than root then you also need to supply a UID and/or GID like is in your VBox fstab line (probably the same ones you used would work fine).