Esxi 6.0U2 Windows VM's Gateway Issue

[LuisDominguez]

Hi Guys, im experiencing a very rare issue with a fresh ESXi installation, i hope someone could provide any advice because i havent been able to find a solution,  here is my scenario:

• ESXI 6.0U2 Fresh installation in headless Dell server.
• Using ConnectX-3 Mellanox Network card.
• Connected to a Cisco device were a trunk is defined and passing Vlans 8, & 10.
• Management network is under Vlan 8;  from here i don't have any issues, all other vlans are accessible including external services like Internet and WAN.
• Created Vswitch0 with Port groups for specific Vlans (8 & 10).

Now, here is the issue;  when i create a windows VM (tested with windows 7, windows 10, windows server 2008 and windows server 2012) and I assign the port group for vlan 8 or Vlan 10, VM can ping all hosts on subnet, except gateway, obviously I cannot access other vlans and external services due to gateway not visible, the weird thing is that I created  linux VM's and all seems working fine, those machines can see their gateway and all other vlans and external services.

Have any of you experienced something similar?

Do you know if there is any patch needs to be applied to ESXI?

Do you know if there is a specific patch that needs to be applied to windows?

I'll appreciate any help on this.

Best Regards.

Luis Dominguez.

[DavoudTeimouri]

I guess, there is a miss-configuration on your physical switch or nic teaming problem on your virtual switch.

Please share some screenshots from your ESXi networking.

[LuisDominguez]

Hello Davoud, thanks for you reply, attached is the ESXI config screnshot, also here is the port configuration on switch:

switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q

switchport mode trunk
switchport  trunk allowed vlan 8,10,601,602

As I mentioned, the thing that confuses me a lot is that the Linux servers work fine, this is just happening to the Windows servers.

[a_p_]

This indeed sounds strange. From what you mentioned about the switch setup, all I could think of is a configuration issue within the guest operating systems themselves. What kind of subnets do you use? Can you confirm that the guest's IP addresses, subnet masks and gateway addresses are properly configured to meet the subnet's requirements?

André

[LuisDominguez]

Hi André, thanks for your reply, regarding the guest, I already verified configuration settings for subnet mask, IP, and gateway, I tried both manually and DHCP IP configurations and the result its always the same, I can ping everything within the subnet but gateway does not respond, i also tried with different network card E1000, VmxNET3, E1000E and I get same results on each.

[indonez]

Hi Luis,

Where is the location of the gateway IP address? Can you ping from VM to nearest switch vlan IP Address? I assume that you already can ping from VM to VM with same port group.

[J1mbo]

What is the MAC address of the gateway as observed from a Linux host (arp -a) and from the Windows guests? I'd run wireshark on the guests and a mirror port of the gateway(s) and see what is happening.

[LuisDominguez]

Hi indonez thanks for your reply, from VM to VM on the same port group comunication it's ok, I can ping to any host on that Vlan even if they are on different locations (on different switches), the server is connected directly to the core switch that has the gateway IP.

[LuisDominguez]

Hi J1mbo, thanks for your reply, here is the screenshot of the arp -a on linux VM, on windows VM after a ping it never shows the entry for the gateway, we already run a wireshark capture and we never see any package going out of the Esxi host when trying to reach gateway on windows machine (like it gets stuck somewere else) , from Linux VM traffic packets looks ok.

[LuisDominguez · Accepted solution]

Finally found issue, Mellanox driver had a bug, I just updated Native drivers on ESXi and the issue dissapeared. Thanks everyone for your support.