Quick and Dirty Network

[Khue]

I need to be able to setup a network quickly within an ESX 3.5u4 box. The purpose of this network is to deploy a test domain. Obviously I want to make sure that network traffic does not escape and cause problems with the production systems. To do so, I first created a new switch without a vmnic assigned to it and labeled it "Test VLAN." I then leveled up a workstation and a windows server 2003 box and placed both virtual machines on this newly created network. The problem is, the workstation machine (windows xp sp 3) can see the windows server box, but the windows server box cannot see the windows xp virtual machine. Does anyone have any suggestions or perhaps a better method for me achieving the same results? The network engineer is against setting up another VLAN from the network/physical switch side which is why I am trying to do this from the ESX side. Thanks in advance.

[joshp]

Did you check the obvious, Windows XP firewall is disabled? Also, IP and Subnet correct on both WinXP and Server?

[pauljrb]

Hi,

Have you double checked all the basics, IP addressing, rebooting the server / workstation etc?

Do you have multiple NICs per VM?

When you ping the IP of the workstation from the server what happens?

Sounds like a problem within the VMs to me, I have setup countless labs in the way you are describing.

[Khue]

Yeah, I checked all that obvious stuff in the event I screwed something up because I was in a hurry. Both my templates have the windows security center and windows ICS/firewall service turned off. Other things I checked were like the route tables (route print) and I checked some tracert commands and there wasn't really much help there. I also noticed that the windows xp box had a flexible adapter and the windows 2003 box had a vmxenhanced adapter. I tried putting both of them to flexible since the windows xp machine can ping the windows 2003 machine (the 2003 machine cannot see the xp machine).

[joshp]

What is the IP address and subnet of your WinXP and Server VM's? Route Print and Tracert will not help you because a gateway address is not required for your test setup.

[Khue]

It's a 24 bit subnet (255.255.255.0). The server is @ xx.xx.xx.5 and the workstation is at xx.xx.xx.10. That should be acceptable.

[pauljrb]

Do you have VMware tools installed on either VM? Could try re-installing that.

To try and isolate the problem you could try bringing up a second XP machine and see if that can ping the first xp machine.

[Rumple · Accepted solution]

If the XP machine can ping the server then nothing is wrong at the networking level as the packet made it to the server AND BACK. If the server cannot ping the XP machine then its something on XP not responding to ICMP traffic. When looking at Windows 2003 can you manage the desktop using the computer management or map to the admin$ share.

Can the XP box ping localhost and map to itself?

I've seen this usually when there was either something wrong with the network adapter or some filter level driver like Norton internet security or some crap got installed and deleted.

[Khue]

Norton A/V had its Firewall up. By default our network policies apply port rules to these servers but because this is sitting off the reservation it never gets the information to allow certain ports. The issue was on the XP machine not the 2003 box. Good call on the A/V software.