ESXi

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  • 1.  Problem with ESXi 5 Nested VM Networking

    Posted Jun 10, 2012 08:58 PM

    Hello everyone. I am evaluating ESXi 5 in this fashion:

    Host machine: Fedora 16 x64 running Workstation 8

    ESXi 5 installed inside Workstation 8

    Ubuntu 10.04 VM installed in the ESXi 5

    Windows 2008 Standard Server VM inside Workstation 8 to run vSphere

    I have been trying my hardest to get my nested ESXi vm's to get outgoing internet access and I cant seem to be able to, atleast efficiently. The best I think I have been able to get is the VM seems to be accessing the internet out from the management network, even though I have the VMNetwork set up on another NIC.

    This is my ESXI VM configuration:

    2 NIC both in NAT mode

    1st NIC has a static IP and is attached to my management network

    2nd NIC is not attached to management network, it is on its own vSwitch, Ubuntu VM is in that second vSwitch.

    Like I said, even though Ubuntu is on that second switch, I am seeing no traffic through the second NIC.

    I would really appreciate any help I can get on this issue, I love VMWare and its products and I would like to learn about ESXi as much as I can before I build a physical server.



  • 2.  RE: Problem with ESXi 5 Nested VM Networking

    Posted Jun 10, 2012 09:08 PM

    Did you enable promiscuous mode for your nested ESXi hosts?

    Regards,

    Mario



  • 3.  RE: Problem with ESXi 5 Nested VM Networking

    Posted Jun 10, 2012 09:10 PM

    Um, well I enabled promiscuous mode for something in here, I honestly don't know what it is, and even when I enabled it, it didn't do any good. I have no idea what I am doing here so I probably didn't do it right or enabled it for the right device.



  • 4.  RE: Problem with ESXi 5 Nested VM Networking

    Posted Jun 10, 2012 09:18 PM

    You need to set the Promiscuous Mode to "Accept" on the port group of your vSwitch, where your nested ESXi hosts are connected to.

    This is needed that your nested ESXi hosts also get the traffic for your VMs inside your nested environment.

    Take a look at these KB for an deeper explaination: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&externalId=1002934

    Regards,

    Mario



  • 5.  RE: Problem with ESXi 5 Nested VM Networking

    Posted Jun 10, 2012 09:50 PM

    OK.. so what I did now was I removed the second vSwitch, made a VMNetwork on my vSwitch0 (which has my management network), enabled promiscuous mode for everything I could on that vswitch, and moved my VM to it. If my Ubuntu VM is set up on DHCP, it doesn't get a lease. If I configure a static IP on it, I test the connectivity with apt-get update, it doesn't exit out immediately which tells me its trying to do something, viewing the networking adapter of my ESXi from Workstation, it's blinking, but nothings happening. If it helps at all, the output I am getting from apt-get is "Something wicked happened resolving "whatever.whatever.ubuntu.com" (-5 - no address associated with hostname). Eventually, it seems to start updating, but the entire process is super slow, and I cant seem to ping the VM from my Linux Host.

    EDIT:

    Ok, so new update, I created a second vSwitch, connected vmnic1 to it, that vSwitch has a dhcp lease from my main network. I can see my VM from my router. But I can't ping it. Does ESXi have some kind of firewall thing it uses?

    Edit 2:

    Ok, I have NO idea what I did, but my nested VM now is able to access the net. Thanks for your help though :smileywink: