Setting up a virtual network

[fordy17]

Hi All,

         Sorry if this question's been asked a million times but, as a newbie to ESXi, I'm having a few problems configuring my virtual network. Any pointers in the right direction or links to beginners' guides would be gratefully accepted.

Basically at the moment I have Win 2K8 R2 x64 and Win 7 x64 VMs set up on my ESXi server. The 2k8 is a DC on my existing external domain. It is also a DHCP and DNS server (I'll get around to RRAS later). It has 2 vNICs. The first (wan) adapter is getting an ip address off my broadband router and is therefore fine (I'll deal with public IP addresses later). The second is the lan/vlan interface and is configured with a static ip, 192.168.20.5, which is the dns server address and in the ip subnet (192.168.20.x) served by DHCP . Ideally I want to connect this to a physical NIC for the physical internal network as well as a virtual internal network which vms in the same domain can connect to.

The Win7 vm has one vNIC and at the present isn't getting an address. It is configured on VM2 as is the internal vNIC of the DC.

At a later date I also intend to add a second separate domain and DC with the same setup (we run two businesses from the same site). There cannot  be any connection between the two. The physical aspect of this is pretty straighforward. Would it merely be a case of extra physical NICs and duplicating the setup for the first domain?

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks in advance.

Graeme

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

I can't tell you why the Win7 Client does not currently get a DHCP lease without more details. However, to answer your question about a separate network for the second domain, yes this can be done by either creating separate vSwitches connected to the appropriate physical switches or by separating the traffic using VLANs, if the physical environment supports it.

André

[fordy17]

Sorry was being very dim. I hadn't authorised the DHCP server!! The vswitch is now operational but has no management network. Is this correct?

[fordy17]

Hi,

I've attached the networking diagram from the vSphere Client. The second network has no management network and I have no internet on the windows 7 vm. Is this something that I need to rectify?

My second physical NIC is not connected as I don't have a switch where I am. Will it show up and could I bind that to VM Network 2 when connected so that the server can service physical clients as well?

Do I need to bridge the connections somehow to allow the win 7 client to access VM Network 1's internet connection.

Hope this makes sense.

Many thanks

Graeme

[a_p_]

The second network has no management network ...

The Management Network is used to manage the ESXi host itself and has nothing to do with the Virtual Machine networks, so there's no need to setup a Management Network on each vSwitch.

... and I have no internet on the windows 7 vm.

How could you, without an uplink. It's basically the same as with a physical network. If a PC is connected to a switch and there's no connection to the Internet (e.g. to a router) you won't have the chance to work online.

Will it show up and could I bind that to VM Network 2 when connected so that the server can service physical clients as well?

Yes, this should work.

Do I need to bridge the connections somehow to allow the win 7 client to access VM Network 1's internet connection.

What's the purpose of separating the domains if you now want to bridge the networks? What you may do is to use a firewall (e.g. pfSense), configure a separate vSwitch for each domain (without uplinks) and setup the firewall to connect to each "domain" vSwitch as well as the one with the uplink to allow Internet traffic for the different domains but block direct traffic between them.

André

[fordy17]

Told you I was a numpty!! Thanks for your input.