VLAN issues with Realtek NIC (RTL8169)

[000000000000004]

I have an ESXI 5 server connected to a Layer 3 switch. I also have a DHCP server connected to the same switch. I get an error message when any virtual machines request a lease from the DHCP server.

Error message:

19:06:13 dhcp,warning dhcp1 offering lease 192.168.1.171 for 00:0C:29:38:38:22 without success

This is an address from default VLAN 1 (untagged VLAN), the virtual machine requested an IP address from a completely different VLAN.

There is no such issues with Intel cards, only with Realtek RTL8169 based cards.

[dhabbetichandra]

The default windows drivers had no extra settings for VLANs.
The solution was the Realtek VLAN protocol driver, which is a part of Diagnostic all in one windows program. Download the file (8MB), unzip it and install at your realtek nic, the VLAN protocol driver from the path: DiagnosticAllin1(2.0.1.5)_20100614\EXE_Diagnostic\WIN7\64\RTVLANPT.

for more information you can visit http://vmblog.gr/microsoft/hyper-v/enable-realtek-vlan-settings-in-windows/

[milton123]

According to you attachment image you can't make trunk Switch to PC. You have to make it access port.

Cheers, Yours Udin

[000000000000004]

After further investigation, I came to this conclusion:

1. DHCP requests through VLAN to VM Networks do not work with Realtek RTL8169 based cards.

2. Management network have no problem to get an IP address assigned on any VLAN number.

3. With Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5754, everything works as expected (se attached picture).

The reason that I wanted to swap NIC to Realtek is that MTU on my Broadcom cards is limited to 1500. If I'm trying to set anything higher than 1500 on vSwitch0, then I get an error message like "Unable to set MTU to 1501 the following uplinks refused the MTU setting:vmnic0".

[000000000000004]

milton123 wrote:

According to you attachment image you can't make trunk Switch to PC. You have to make it access port.

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers 

I'm not realy sure what you mean by that. This configuration works perfectly with ESXi 4 and 5, except that DHCP through VLAN to virtual machines doesn't work with Realtek based ethernet cards.

Anyway, the communication seems to work with static IP adresses, but not with DHCP assigned IP adresses. I have seen that when a virtual machine request an IP from VLAN 100, the DHCP server responds on the native VLAN 1. That explains why it doesn't work with my Realtek NIC.

The solution will be to use static IP adresses, or install another NIC in my server. As I wrote earlier, Broadcom/Intel based network cards works flawlessly. The problem for me is to find a supported low profile NIC with support for more than MTU 1500.

[Lyve]

Wonderful to have found this post, I'm facing a similar problem with the same realtek NIC:

My VM (Endian Firewall 2.5.1) uses the Realtek NIC and requests an IP via DCHP. This works and the connection works for about a minute.

After that, no more incoming data is received, when requesting another IP by DCHP again, no response is received.

Any hints?

Thanks,

Nils

[cgood]

Спасибо! Аналогичная ситуация с HP Proliant ML150 G6. На Broadcom все работает.