ESXi 5.1 networking setup

[jsousanet]

Hello experts.

I have one ESXi host with multiple NICs and want to setup some lab environments in diferent subnets as i was used to do with NAT in VMWare Workstation.

So here's my scenario:

- 1 ESXi 5.1 Up.1 host with 4 NICs, connected to an unmanaged L2 switch

- Subnet used: 192.168.1.0/24, Gateway: 192.168.1.1 (DSL Router and DHCP Server)

Was thinking in mounting 3 diferent subnets in that host to put some VM's and be able to comunicate with other VM's and to the internet.

As i'm digging in the web for some guidance, i'm starting to understand that's not so easy to acomplished as it was with Workstation. In ESX, there's virtual switches, port groups and other stuff to setup...

I've started to setup NIC Teaming and aggregate all 4 NIC's.

Now begins the issues...

1. Why one of those NIC's stays allways in standby? Is there a way to setup all 4 NICs as active intefaces?

2. How to setup virtual switches and physicall NICs associations? All NICs receive broadcasts in the 192.168.1.0 range.

My intention was to create 3 subnets (192.168.10.0;192.168.20.0 and 192.168.30.0) and have the abbility to comunicate between subnets and use the DSL Router as gateway.

As far as i've seen in the web, there's some similar configurations but none applied to my scenario, i think that is possible to acomplished using virtual switches with VLANs. The problem is, i'm not 100 % sure how to set it up.

Any advice/guidance will be greatly apreciated.

[wmarusiak]

Hi,

1. Could you please show us how you configured vSwitch with four network adapters? Is the one nic added to active adapters?

2. What I can suggest if you want to play with vLANs is to setup vyatta or any other router in ESXi. You can follow this guide Roggy: Vyatta Vmware Lab

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Community - a virtual switch is just that simple layer 2 switch - so any VM connected t0 a VM port group on that switch will be able to communicate to any other VM on that switch in the same subnet - to talk across subnets you will need a router such as the vyatta virtual router

This should give you an understanding of a virtual switch and how to configure - http://vmwarelearning.com/dLr/configuring-vnetwork-standard-switches/

[jsousanet]

Hello guys.

Thanks for the fast responses.

I'll take a look of the supplied links and let you know the results.

Thanks again.

[jsousanet]

Hello again.

Guys, is there a way i can mark both of your answers as correct? Because you're both correct.... and it's unfair to mark one as correct and not the other...

Now regarding the issues i was facing, it's all solved.

@ wmarusiak - You were right. The physical network adapter was in stand-by, because indeed it was not in the active interfaces section... This is what happens to newbies...

The vyatta router is indeed a very cool and awesome tool. Thanks to the developers....

@ weinstein5 – You were also right. The networking configuration in ESX is so much simpler than i was thinking… With standard vswitchs, a simple L2 physical switch and great tools like vyatta, we can do a bunch of stuff that normally would need some complex appliances to make it work.

The PDF you’ve supplied is simple, direct and gives us the ability to have a clear view of how networking works on ESX. Great PDF file.

So finally, with your help and tools like vyatta i've been able to mount everything like i wanted, and it works like a charm…

Thanks again for precious help.

Best regards from Portugal...