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Sealice
Contributor
Contributor

Configuring VST on ESX 3.0.2 Hosts

Hello,

We have two NICs on our ESX hosts. One for vmotion and one we route the VM traffic through. We want to setup port groups that send to different VLANs that we have setup on our Cisco Catalyst 4006. We are trying to use VST since we only have the one NIC to use for VM traffic. I have setup the port groups with the corresponding VLAN IDs but I am unable to send/receive any traffic to/from the VLANs.

Im thinking there must be some config file or command that needs to be modified on the ESX host (via service console) to get this solution to work. But I cant seem to find any information on it other than the networking white papers around the net.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Seeeeealicccce

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15 Replies
Sealice
Contributor
Contributor

Also, on the vSwitch I have 2 port groups created, one for the VLAN100 and one for the VLAN200. This vSwitch is associated to a NIC connected to the physical switch where the VLAN100 and VLAN200 trunk has been configured.

Oh...and the servers are Dell 2970s running AMD cpus if that helps the situation at all.

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jjohnston1127
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

If you have tagged the VLANs in the port groups I would check the switch port configuration on your Cisco switch and verify that it is correctly setup as a trunk.

Can you post the configuration of that port here?

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Sealice
Contributor
Contributor

This is how the Networking guy setup the port

switchport trunk encap dot1q

switchport mode trunk

switchport trunk allo vla 100,200

switchport nonego

Reconfirmed...the tags on the vSwitch are all correctly setup.

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jjohnston1127
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

That's the correct switchport configuration. Are you absolutely sure you have the NIC plugged into the right port on the switch?

From the switch, have your network guy ping a virtual machine.

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depping
Leadership
Leadership

setup is correct indeed. is your native vlan1 or ...?

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Sealice
Contributor
Contributor

Yes we have it connected to the right port and when we pinged the VM, it didnt respond.

Our native vlan is 1.

The default port group (VM Network) sits in vlan 100 but when we switch the 4006 port over to a trunk and associate the VM with vlan ID 100 (or 200), we get no where.

This is why I was thinking it must be something with the host NIC configuration. It appears as though our vswitches are correct and the switch port config is correct...not much else left I'm thinking.

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depping
Leadership
Leadership

could you post the outcome of the following commands and post it here?

esxcfg-vnics -l

esxcfg-vswitch -l

Sealice
Contributor
Contributor

I tried those commands but I get the reply "bash: esxcfg-nics: command not found"

I am running this as root under the root folder.

Any ideas?

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bggb29
Expert
Expert

I suggest a few things on the cat have the admin type

sh int trunk the verify from the int what trunks it knows and allows. I have made mistakes her

this is what one of my ports displays

Gi3/33 1-899,1002-1005

You should see 100,200

Next on the esx server sounds like you had a path issue from one of your posts do any of the esxcfg commands works for you.

Type this in if they do

esxcfg-info -n | grep -E -i "_name|Hint"

this command should list vlan's and subnet your vmnics are seeing.

also can you ping the routers interface on the vlans from a guest or a host configured on the same vlan.

Do you restart the server or vmware agents after you make the changes to the vswitchs /

jjohnston1127
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Sealice - looks like you had a typo. You tried esxcfg-nics instead of esxcfg-vnics.

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Sealice
Contributor
Contributor

This is what I get when I run esxcfg-info -n | grep -E -i "_name|Hint"

\[root@itsvm001 root]# esxcfg-info -n | grep -E -i "_name|Hint"

\ |----_name.................................................vmnic0

\ |----Network Hint..........................................0 10.00.00.00/255.255.255.00, 200 192.168.05.00/255.255.255.00, 100 10.00.00.00/255.255.255.00

\ |----_name.................................................vmnic1

\ |----Network Hint..........................................0 10.00.00.00/255.255.255.00

\[root@itsvm001 root]#

Not sure what any of this means...

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Sealice
Contributor
Contributor

I get the following when I run esxcfg-vswitch -l

\[root@itsvm001 root]# esxcfg-vswitch -l

Switch Name Num Ports Used Ports Configured Ports Uplinks

vSwitch0 32 10 32 vmnic0

PortGroup Name Internal ID VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks

DMZ portgroup5 200 1 vmnic0

VM Network portgroup1 0 4 vmnic0

Inside portgroup4 100 2 vmnic0

Service Console portgroup0 0 1 vmnic0

Switch Name Num Ports Used Ports Configured Ports Uplinks

vSwitch1 64 3 64 vmnic1

PortGroup Name Internal ID VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks

VMotion portgroup3 0 1 vmnic1

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Sealice
Contributor
Contributor

esxcfg-vnics still didnt work...

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bggb29
Expert
Expert

from vmnic0 i only see vlan 200 and vlan 0

from vnic1 i see vlan 0

I do not see your vlan 100 on vmnic0 from the traffic. I do see them in your configuration.

One concern is your service console is in the dmz

If you configure a host on vlan 200 can you ping it from the router, can you use vmkping on the console and hit either the ip gateway on the vlan 100 or 200.

If you have guests on either vlan can they see each other, if you put a physical host on the vlan can you reach it.

Did the network admin verify his config for the port by issuing the command sh int trunk

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Sealice
Contributor
Contributor

All,

It appears as though my issue has been resolved. Im not exactly sure what has happened other than we moved Vmotion off of the second nic (Vnic1) to the same nic (Vnic0) we are using for traffic (to free up the NIC in case we needed to implament EST). We also created a second Sconsole thats running off Vnic1. I have no idea...but im glad its working.

Thanks for the help.

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