To give a brief description of my trouble, I have now installed ESXi 7 on a Workstation Pro 16 virtual machine to test its operation. However, I am having trouble getting the virtual machines on ESXi to communicate with the virtual machines on Workstation side. Can you please tell me how to get the virtual machines on ESXi to connect to the Workstation side?
I have drawn a picture of the situation and will explain my environment based on this picture.
- My PC
OS: CentOS Stream 8
Kernel: 4.18.0-310.el8.x86_64
- VMware Workstation Pro
Version: 16.1.2 build-17966106 (licensed, no expiration)
- ESXi
Version: 7.0.3 builed 18644231 (evaluation mode)
I have a segment (172.26.2.0/24) on VMware Workstation and built Windows and ESXi guests on it.
The default gateway for this segment is 172.26.2.2, the vmnet port for the host PC is 172.26.2.1, the Windows machine is 172.26.2.3, and the ESXi host is 172.26.2.200.
I understand that the virtual network on ESXi is an extension of the segment on the Workstation side, so the network configuration is as shown in the picture above.
The ESXi IP address 172.26.2.200 is communicating with all the IP addresses on the Workstation side, and I can login to the ESXi management console via http (green lines).
The problem is that I have a Windows machine on ESXi with IP address 172.26.2.201, which cannot communicate with all ports on the Workstation side (red lines). vSwitch0 on ESXi is set to default. The only thing I have tried is Ping, but I have disabled the OS firewall, so I can only assume it is a network issue.
Perhaps the Workstation switch is not connected to the ESXi's vSwitch0 and my understanding is incorrect, but what on earth can I fix to connect the ESXi internals to the Workstation?
Thanks for reading!
If I follow correctly what you describe, it would suggest that the issue may reside within the either the WinSvr2019 ESXi Guest or the ESXi vSwitch0 setup
The reasoning being is that the ESXi VMKernel is able to communicated with all 'external devices' (Default Gateway, VMware Workstation Host and one of its Guests) which implies that VMware Workstation is setup currently. One point worth noting from your diagram is that the ESXi VMKernel does not use the virtual network switch to communicate externally.
ESXi Architecture
[https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/ESXi_architecture.pdf]
. . one other possibility could be that the IP allocated to the WinSvr2019 is a duplicate.
Questions and Observations:
- For completeness could you just clarify what the network setting is for the VMWare Workstation VM ESXi Guest, i.e. Bridged, NAT, Host Only or Custom . . . however, I am assuming that its NAT all but with fix device IPs.
- If the VMWare Workstation VM is set to NAT, what is the DHCP range.
- what is the IP range/subnet of your local network.
- Could you, if you've not already done so, setup another workstation VM operating system within the ESXi, say Win 10 (type with and without NAT) and see if that can communicate with the 'outside world' but also with the ESXi WinSvr2019 Guest.
- what is the result of an ifconfig/all command on the ESXi WinSvr2019 Guest ?
- to confirm, can you ping from the ESXi VMKernel to ESXi WinSvr2019 Guest, and vice versa.
Thanks!
> One point worth noting from your diagram is that the ESXi VMKernel does not use the virtual network switch to communicate externally.
→Sorry, I was wrong. I took a packet capture of vSwitch0 and confirmed that all pings to and from VMKernel were going through vSwitch0. And as it turns out, ARPs from ESXi guests are being rejected by vSwitch0 or Workstation switch only when exiting to the Workstation Pro side. ARPs from Workstation Pro side seems to be passing through. So it may be a problem with the security settings on vSwitch0 or the port group. I haven't figured out how to set it up yet.
> For completeness could you just clarify what the network setting is for the VMWare Workstation VM ESXi Guest, i.e. Bridged, NAT, Host Only or Custom . . . however, I am assuming that its NAT all but with fix device IPs.
→I am using Custom. The current setup(vmnet7) looks like this.
> If the VMWare Workstation VM is set to NAT, what is the DHCP range.
→ DHCP is now disabled.
> what is the IP range/subnet of your local network.
→ Sorry, which network are you referring to? The host PC (CentOS) is 172.16.0.89/23.
> Could you, if you've not already done so, setup another workstation VM operating system within the ESXi, say Win 10 (type with and without NAT) and see if that can communicate with the 'outside world' but also with the ESXi WinSvr2019 Guest.
→ "Without NAT", I changed the NAT setting to Host-Only on the Workstation Pro side, is this correct?
With NAT, outside world ---> ping fail
With NAT, WinSrv2019 ---> ping success
Without NAT, outside world ---> ping fail
Without NAT, WinSrv2019 ---> ping success
> what is the result of an ifconfig/all command on the ESXi WinSvr2019 Guest ?
→
> to confirm, can you ping from the ESXi VMKernel to ESXi WinSvr2019 Guest, and vice versa.
→ Both directions succeeded.
