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Dready
Contributor
Contributor

How to configure gateway addresses when using vmotion and multiple core switches ?

Hello,

I've got 8 ESX 3.5 servers spread accross 2 buildings. Both buildings have 2 core switches. To keep netwerk traffic clean all servers connected to a core switch should have the core switch' ip address set as gateway.

For the physical ESX host, that's no problem.

But what about the virtual machine's running on the hosts ?

They bounce all over the place, allways keeping the same gateway address, even when running on a host connected to a different gateway.

Is there a way to solve this ??

At the moment everything is running fine, it's the result of a friday afternoon discussion with our network fascist.........

So, anybody an idea ??

ThX,

Harry

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Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

To fix this, the VM must know on which host it is running.... Which it can not tell itself.

So you need to perhaps run a task that after a vMotion (vMotion alarm in VC) and then have that script reset the gateway within the GuestOS.

However if it is not broke why fix it.


Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
Dready
Contributor
Contributor

All VM's are running fine, we're looking for a way to prevent unnessesary trafic between the buildings. As you can imagine, 4 ESX hosts with about 8 - 10 vm's each means a lot of unneeded traffic. I was hoping there would be a way to have the vm's use the same gateway as het host it is running on.

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TomHowarth
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As Texiwill has already stated, the Guests have no knowledge of which host they are running on, the obverse is not true, you may be able to invoke a script from VC so that on a VMotion a script is run against the guest that issues a command to the guest to change the network address, I do not know enough about the VC SDK, but if you post here on the development forums , you may get a better anwser as to if it is, or if it is not possible. and maybe even some help with the script.

Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator

Tom Howarth VCP / VCAP / vExpert
VMware Communities User Moderator
Blog: http://www.planetvm.net
Contributing author on VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment
Contributing author on VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
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