Virtual ESXi 5.1 - Nested VM's have no connectivity

[ccsmse]

I have installed a Virtual ESXi 5.1 VM inside a Physical ESXi 5.1 host. This works fine, but VM's inside the Virtual ESXi have no connectivity. I can ping from physical ESXi to Virtual ESXi, but not from Physical ESXi to nested VM.

The virtual ESXi is connected to a Port Group on a distributed vSwitch. I have configured the Port group to allow Promiscuous Mode. Virtual ESXi and Nested VM are on the same VLAN, and this VLAN is configured on the Port Group VLAN settings

I can connect to the Virtual ESXi just fine, but it does not seem to be passing traffic through to the nested VM's.

Any thoughts?

[a_p_]

Not sure, but since you are actually cascading switches and dVS will see different MAC addresses, you may want to check whether allowing MAC address changes and Forged transmits is necessary in addition to promiscuous mode.

André

[ccsmse · Accepted solution]

Brilliant. Just tried this, and specifically enabling 'Forged Transmits' fixed it. That step wasn't on any of the guides i was following. It seems that ESXi 5.0 had these policy settings set to reject/accept/accept whereas in 5.1 these settings are set to reject/reject/reject, hence Forged Transmits was allowed by default previously.

Thankyou *very* much

Here's a couple of relevant links that mention this requirement for further reference.

How The VMware Forged Transmits Security Policy Works via @ChrisWahl | Wahl Network

Nesting ESXi on ESXi 5.1 in vCloud Director 5.1 | vXpertise

[dbutch1976]

Hey guys,

In my case I was deploying nested ESXi hosts using autodeploy.  The first NIC would get an IP, but the second NIC simply wouldn't under any circumstances.  This fixed my issue also.

Thanks!