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davidlivecchi
Contributor
Contributor
‎10-01-2014 03:02 PM

Question about Host Nics

we currently setup a new VMware ESXi 5.5 server and I started noticing problems with my DHCP Scope and not being able to receive an IP on newly connected devices. I looked into it and found that the Physical nics in the host all were getting an address, then VMware obtained an IP for each VM connected to the vSwitch main problem with this part is all of the VM's have static IP's set in the guest. so for the 6 nics there are 6 Leases + 8 static VM's + 8vPorts =  so 22 IP's used for 8 VM's is this normal? Is there a way to force the Physical nics to use a static IP? is there a way to force the vSwitch to use the Physical nics IP instead of obtaining another? Are we setting this up incorrectly? Sorry for the number of questions but every where I look for setting host IP's they all talk about the vSwitch or management port IP not the physical nics in the machine. I did find one place that said to create a profile for the host but when I tried that our essential license does not support profiles. any help would be greatly appreciated. if more information is needed please let me know. Thank you in advance.

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3 Replies
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership
‎10-01-2014 03:11 PM

Welcome to the Community,

ESXi doesn't request any DHCP leases for its physical network adapters. Only VMkernel port groups and VMs, which have no static IP settings configured will request DHCP leases. Do you see the IP addresses in ESXi? Maybe the host/BIOS is configured to try PXE boot prior to staring ESXi from disk, which causes the NICs to request DHCP leases!?

André

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davidlivecchi
Contributor
Contributor
‎10-01-2014 03:34 PM

That's what I was thinking but the physical nic's MAC address is listed on our DHCP server. I will this weekend when I can restart the server look into the bios for PXE boot settings. In the web client and in vsphere I do see that the physical nics show xxx.xxx.xxx.174 for all of the nics but when you look at the DHCP server it has 9 leases listed all with the same MAC address, when I look up that MAC address it is listed as a VMware MAC. the 9 would be 8 guests and one management port. our management port is set as static and all of our guests are set as static I could understand the physical nics and PXE boot options being a cause for the physicals but the vSwitch seems to be acquiring a lease for each static address. I guess what I am trying to say it seems like the vSwitch is acting like a NAT so it is grabbing a lease then translating it to the static IP for the VM does that make sense? If it is doing this how would I turn off NAT translation?

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership
‎10-02-2014 10:29 AM

That's indeed strange. However, vSwitches don't do anything else but switching, i.e. no NAT etc.

>>> ... in vsphere I do see that the physical nics show xxx.xxx.xxx.174 for all of the nics ...

Where do you see this. I guess this is an "observed" IP address, which means that the ESXi hosts detected traffic with this address on the network adapter.

>>> ... 9 leases listed all with the same MAC address ...

Is this MAC address assigned to a VMkernel port group or a VM?

André

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