Nesting VMs for vSphere in-a-box = network issues

[brizzio]

Good morning all,

I'm trying to setup an vSphere infrastructure within VMware Workstation 8.0.2 for training/testing purposes. The problem is that the nested VMs booted inside the ESXi VMs cannot reach the physical LAN, no matter if the vNICs are set in NAT (vmnet8) or bridged.

All "1st level VMs" can ping each other and reach the outside world without problem. But if I try to spam a VM inside my virtual ESXi, the VM is unable to grab a IP from the VMNet8 embeeded DHCP server or from our physical DHCP (with the ESXi's VM's vNIC in "Bridged" mode).

I've tried to manually set a IP address to a nested VM on my ESX VM, and I sucessfully can ping it... but cannot ping the external world.

I'm trying VMware Workstation 8.0.2 over Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

For some reason I cannot understand everything works fine if I try to deploy the same environment using VMware Workstation for Windows... 😕 

I'll appreciate any help.

Best regards.

[herseyc]

I think you may need to set the vSwitches that the nested VMs are connected to on the hosts to promiscuos mode to allow traffic from the nested VMs out.

I know there is some docs out there on this but cannot locate them right now.

I am running my lab in workstation and use NAT for access from my nested VMs out.  I know it works but I can't remember right off what I did to set it up.  Will check when I am back home tonight and let you know if it has not been figured out before then.

Hope this helps.

Hersey

[herseyc · Accepted solution]

Check this KB: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/287

[brizzio]

Thank you very much Hersey. Now it's working as expected" 🙂