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jomccon
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Simulating a WAN

We purchased VI3 with 2 ESX server and VirtualCenter. My goal is to simulate a project WAN (multiple sites connected by T1's) that we have. We'll use this VI3 lab as a test environment to try things out before they go on the project network.

I had assumed that the EXS server would be able to handle the routing between VLAN's, and was very disappointed when I found out this is not a normal function. So I setup a layer 2 switch and trunked the ports for the pNIC connected to the vSwitch. This enables talk on the same VLAN's on different ESX servers. Then I setup a a 2003 server with 4 vNICs and installed RRAS. This is used to route between the 4 port groups (w/ VLAN ID's) I've setup. So all of the computers are talking to each other.

But I haven't been able to find a way to traffic shape the links between the sites. Has anyone tried this before? Thanks in advance for any advice.

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Anders_Gregerse
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

It is possible with vmware workstation using the team function perhaps a similar feature hides in the .vmx parameters. Otherwise you need some sort of throttling software on the guest nic.

Doesn't Windows have a QoS service on the nics that or doesn't it support bandwidth throttling? NetLimiter.com has the required functionality and you might have a look at Tmurgent.com (tmnetsim)

Message was edited by:

Anders Gregersen

Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

If you want to keep your Windows RRAS server I would suggest this product: www.netlimiter.com. While it's meant more to limit bandwidth by applicaiton, you can set it up to limit bandwidth by subnet as well.

Alternatively, you could look at the router appliances mentioned in this thread.

http://www.vmware.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=679726

VirtualNoitall
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hello,

We do this kind of testing on a very large scale in our development groups. I am not sure if you have the same requirements but we use a product from Shunra; their VE hardware appliance. The product does bandwidth limiting, dropped packets, out of order packets, failover simulation, latency manipulation, etc

http://www.shunra.com/

I know one of our guys was also talking about a linux/open source product that had some of the same features as well. I will query him for that and post it here when I have it.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

If you're looking for a fairly inexpensive hardware appliance that you can use to simulate different WAN connections, take a look at:

http://networknightmare.com/

We use one of these appliances during our RiverBed demos to simulate a WAN connection...and show how effective the RiverBed WAN accelerators (SteelHead appliances) are across different types of WAN connections.

Chris

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ezed
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

We use M0n0Wall, fairly quick to set up and manage, runs from an ISO.

Try this link, he has a disto built for ESX.

http://chrisbuechler.com/m0n0wall/vmware/

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jomccon
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks for all the tips. I'll probably spend the next few days figuring out which is best for us.

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Jae_Ellers
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Is the built in traffic shaping not adequate for you? You can select Average & Peak Bandwidth, as well as Burst Size. This only applies to outbound traffic, but if you setup the outbound on both sides with similar parameters it should work OK.

http://pubs.vmware.com/vi301/server_config/sc_adv_netwk.6.5.html#954799

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- http://blog.mr-vm.com http://www.vmprofessional.com -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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jomccon
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Jae,

My problem is I would like each port group to talk to each other at LAN speeds, but I want inter port group communication to be at WAN speeds.

But since there isn't built in routing between port groups I can't do this. Unless I purchase a Layer 3 network device.

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ewanat
Contributor
Contributor

You should try DummyNet[/b]. http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/ip_dummynet/

Here is a good tutorial on getting it up and running under VMware with a pre-built BSD appliance:

http://codefromthe70s.org/dummynet.asp

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MarkM111
Contributor
Contributor

Here's a pre configured virtual WAN Emulator that should do what you need plus more.

http://www.dummycloud.com

Mark

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