basic esx (and rdp) network setup

[ihateyourprobs]

Hello together - I'm playing around with my testlab, that looks as follows:

- physical server, hosting vsphere 5.1 (and within vsphere about 10 virtual machines, that host a windows domain and are intended to provide some other functions)

- physical notebook with vsphere client 5.1

- both connected directly via cable (no router, static ip)

As you can see, server and notebook exist on a dedicated network with 192.168.16.xxx ip adresses.

Let's assume, that my "virtual" domain setup includes a dhcp server that delivers ip adresses to the other vm's on a mac-addres-basis. (vms then have ip-adresses in a 192.168.17.xxx range).

Unfortunatly, it is not possible for me to "drag-and-drop" files from my vsphere client into one of the virtual machines (nevertheless vmware tools are installed on the windows server 2012 r2 vms).

My question now is - how would it be possible to route between the two networks - including providing a rdp-port-forwarding or sth like that - to copy files to the virtual domain and to access the virtual machines via rdp...

Would it be an opportunity to place a linux as a "router - vm" ?

Please provide information as detailed as possible, because my linus and networking skills are very limited :smileyhappy:

10000-thanks in advance - cheers

[weinstein5]

Yes you will have to use a Linux router VM that will allow you to route the traffice between the two subnets - there are many such VMs available from the aplliance marketplace -

[ihateyourprobs]

Thank you for your answer - can you recommend one? and link a related tutorial or sth like that ???

Would be nice! thank you

[weinstein5]

pfsense, vyata and monowall are ones that I have heard good things about and here is alink for an overview - http://www.sysprobs.com/guide-vmware-virtual-machine-lan-router-networks

[ihateyourprobs]

uhhhhm - I already read that overview. But the thing is - it's dedicated to workstation. vSphere imho does not support nat- or bridged networking simply by enabling a setting in the configuration console.

Unfortunatly PfSense obviously needs 2 network cards in my esx-host and is intended to route between those networks.

But in my case I only have one "physical" network - the other network is virtually created with windows server dhcp.

Sorry for that, but I don't have a glue how to realise it :smileysad:

[weinstein5]

None of these routers will need two physical nics - you will add a second virtual NIC to the VM - I googled "vyatta router esxi" and came up with these lins -  http://www.vyatta.org/node/5958 or http://www.sohoadvisers.com/tutorials/vyatta-router/vyatta-router-quick-setup

You could do the same for the other two

[ihateyourprobs]

hey guys - me again...

I tried it with PfSense . Unfortunately without success.

Maybe anyone can help me.

my esx host: 192.168.16.1 / 24

my notebook with vsphere client 192.168.16.2 / 24

on the esx host I created 2 networks - the default vSwitch0 that is connected to the vmnic0 and a second vswitch1 that has no physical adapter assigned.

then I created a winserver vm, enabled rdp and assigned a static ip of 10.10.10.2 / 24

then I created a pfSense-router-vm, which then has a "wan-interface" with a static ip adress of 192.168.16.3 / 24 and is assigned to the vSwitch0-network-interface from the configuration and a "lan-interface" with a static ip-adress of 10.10.10.1 / 24 that is assigned to the vSwitch1-network interface from the configuration.

after that, I was able to enter the configuration of pfsense from a browser opened within the winserver vm. then I did some settings, e.g. de-activating the "block private networks" setting for the "wan-interface". and of course I created a port-forward rule, that forwards rdp requests from 192.168.16.3:3395 to 10.10.10.2:3389.

unfortunately I am not able to establish the rdp connection until now.

Is it a simple mistake I made - or has anyone any other suggestion for me? otherwise I'll ask the pfsense community...

Really appreciate your help guys - thanks in advance.

[ihateyourprobs]

Soooo - Smoothwall v3.0 did it for me (with exactly the same configuration).... anyways - thank you