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ronpandya123
Contributor
Contributor

Vlan traffic not detected by virtual adapter

I have an ESX server 4 which has couple of VMs. In one virtual switch(vswitch 1), I have 2 VMs one of which is running Windows server 2008 R2. The windows server and the second VM have one virtual adapter each and it is VMXNET 3. When I send the traffic from 1st VM to 2nd VM (windows server) with VLAN header, wire shark can see the packets but it does display the VLAN header information in the captured packets (screen shot attached). Could you please help me with my issue?

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6 Replies
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Somehow the screen shot is not attached.

Please explain your current network setup (virtual and physical) too.

André

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weinstein5
Immortal
Immortal

Welcome to the Forums - In ESX, typically, VLAN tags are not placed on the packets by the guest OS but by the virtual switch - are the two VMs on the same virtual switch or does the traffice leave the ESX hosts and onto the physical network?

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ronpandya123
Contributor
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The 2 VMs (one is a virtual port and 2nd is windows server 2008 R2)are on the same virtual switch (vswitch1 in vsphere esx configuration with virtual switches.jpg). Hence, the communication is between the 2 VMs and hence the traffic does not leave the ESX host and does not go to physical NIC. The attached file vsphere esx configuration with virtual switches.jpg explains my vswitch. The attached file vmxnet3 with wireshark.jpg shows traffic but no vlan header is present. The following link http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf explains the vlan infrastructure. On pages 7 and 8 they have mentioned about the VST and VGT mode. Do you guys think I will need some 802.1q driver to be installed to detect vlan?

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mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

I have never tagged at the guest level but it was my understanding that something would have to be installed in order for it to work correctly.






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ronpandya
Contributor
Contributor

I just started working on this after almost 2 months. I got this working now. The problem was with the OS. I changed the OS from windows server 2008 to Windows Xp 32 bit. I also edited the registry as shown here http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-005897.htm

Now I can see the VLAN traffic.

P.S.: Editing the registry in windows server 2008 did not help.

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Banbouk
Contributor
Contributor

This issue is related to the adapter driver settings.

For Windows with vmxnet3 adapter there is an option called EnableMonitorMode in the registry under Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\00xx where xx refers to your adapter, just change the value from 0 to 1 to enable monitoring mode and VLAN tags should appear in Wireshark.

Note1: To find the adapter number (00xx) in case you have multiple adapters, you can compare the "DeviceInstanceID" in registry to the "Device instance path" under the Adapter properties in the Details tab.

Note2: Once monitor mode is enabled, then VLAN tagging at the Windows OS level will stop working in case you were using.

 

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