I have an OpenWRT vm running in Fusion 12.1.2. This OpenWRT vm creates a tunnel using OpenConnect to a VPN server.
My OpenWRT vm has a single NIC card using a custom network configured as:
- Allows connection to external network via NAT
- No need for port forwarding
- Subnet IP 172.16.9.0 with mask 255.255.255.248 (smallest supported network in VMware)
- With Fusion 12.1.2 there's no setting to enable DHCP, but it appears to work by default. My vm receives the IP 172.16.9.2 upon booting up.
I use this vm to tunnel specific subnets through it while other subnets I leave alone and are routed locally. The reason why I do this is because this VPN provides routing for a mesh of networks including some of my local subnets, so if I were to connect to this VPN directly and tried to use some of the local subnets I will be routed thorough this VPN adding about 200ms latency to the local connections.
Rather than doing that, I turn on my vm, connect to this remote VPN and add a few static routes targeting this vm running on Fusion as a my gateway.
Well, since upgrading to 12.2 all of this simply doesn't work anymore. The vm is pingable, it connects to the remote vpn, I can ping from the VM itself to the target subnets I'm trying to route to but when used as a gateway from the host this vm it's like a ghost.
Packets simply doesn't flow into the vm.
It appears as if something fundamental changed with the networking layer and this local VM can't be used as a gateway as I could do it before the update.
I rolled back to 12.1.2 and my vpn gateway is back to life again, so I can definitively confirm something was changed (broken?) with the upgrade from 12.1.2 to 12.2.
Not only that, before I could configure the VM with a static IP address if I wanted. Now if I enable DHCP on the preferences/network config for this network, vmware refuses to recognize the statically assigned IP address, only DHCP assigned IPs are recognized.
Adding more color to my experience with Fusion 12.2, I'm close to declaring it a disaster.
Three more issues:
1 - VM significantly slower to start and while working they are not as smooth to operate as 12.1
2 - VMware developers really messed up the networking layer badly. Not only did they break the ability to use a vm as a gateway on the host, but also they broke DHCP. I fired up my Windows VM when trying (again) 12.2 only to discover there was no way I could find where my vm will get an IP via DHCP (tried NAT, Bridge, custom networks, etc). I could not either assigned a fixed IP and allow it to be visible to the network. At the same time, I had a Linux VM running OpenWRT working fine on a dual-network config using NAT and a custom netwotk. Downgraded back to 12.1 and my Windows vm network came back to life
3 - vmrun applet doesn't work anymore when called form a context such as Viscosity events running AppleScript (using JAX). If the same JAX is running directly from the AppleScript IDE, it works. This script starts the OpenWRT if not running. I use this as part of a pre-connection Viscosity script so rather than trying to use my OpenWRT as a gateway I rather create a local VPN connection to it, Viscosity pushes the routes I needed and the VM opens another VPN connection to the remote resource. This was my attempt to workaround the bug introduced by VMWare which makes a vm not capable of acting as a gateway since 12.2
Had to rollback back again to 12.1, which means I won't probably upgrade my laptop to Monterey anytime soon. I'm concerned the upgrade will make 12.1 unusable...
Same here on bigsur + 12.2.
nat settings do not work. host <-> vm networking works but "nat" (vm to 1.1.1.1) does not.
The new mtu setting is not effective & is not even saved.
Is someone from VMWare reading the forums or is everybody too busy with the carnage from the Dell spin-off?
VMWare, you still have clients. In fact, as a business we recently doubled down on VMWare moving all of our hyper-v workloads to V-Sphere? Should I regret I signed off that move?
>>Fusion 12.2 breaks otherwise properly working networking in Fusion 12.1.2
Same here!
And 12.2.1 dost not fix it.