Create Loopback Adapter in ESXI 6.7

[LarryKuntz]

I am new and need help to create a loopback adapter in ESXI 6.7.  I have searched through the communities and I am unable to find anything about how to do this or least something that easy for a newbie like me to follow.  I have done this on VM Workstation however I am unable to use VM Workstation for this project and need to be able to create the looback in ESXI.  If you have a link or some simple instructions that would help me I would greatly appreciate your help.

[sjesse]

Can you share the purpose of this? VMware workstation is different and adding a loopback adapter to esxi I'm not even sure is even possible.

[LarryKuntz]

Sure.  I want to use the loopback to do a direct connection to a VM that I have rather than trying to connect to it though the vswitch and a vnic. 

[sjesse]

Yeah ESXi doesn't work that way, workstation can do bridging like that but its different. If you want a direct connection to a VM you can try passing a network adapter to the vm

Enable Passthrough for a Network Device on a Host

i

[nachogonzalez]

If you wan't your traffic to go outside the ESXi host you will always have to send traffic trought vSwitch and vNIC.

Another option is to add a directpath io nic to the VM VMware Knowledge Base

although it might come with some limitations like loosing the ability to vmotion and take snapshots.  please read this carefully: DirectPath I/O

Why would you like to avoid connecting trough vswitch and nic?

[LarryKuntz]

Hmm...

I tried both of these and I still have the same issue where I cannot reach the interface I need to connect to so I must be doing something wrong. Thank you for the links.

Regarding your earlier question, I am running a VM inside a VM so to speak in a lab environment for testings.

[sjesse]

I'm still confused on what your trying to do. With workstation do you just use the loop back for a local separated network. If so you can create a switch in esxi to connect to but not use any actual uplinks. This would be local to the esxi host, but if your nesting vms inside of that it should be fine. Uplinks aren't required if nothing is leaving that network.

[nachogonzalez]

As sjesse said, i still don't quite understand what you are tring to accomplish.
I think you are trying to do something regarding nesting.

is it possible that you give us a diagram on what you have now and what you are tring to accomplish? nothing very fancy.

[LarryKuntz]

Good Afternoon,

Again, many thanks for helping me.  I am new to the ESXI platform and I am student trying setup various scenarios in a lab environment.  We have lab where I can use ESXI instead of my laptop (That has VM Workstation on it) and the servers have a lot more horsepower than my laptop.  I have attached a diagram of one of the scenarios that is easier to view than the more complicated ones that we work on.  The to IP addresses of 10.10.10.100 and 11.11.11.100 (I put a red arrow pointing to those addresses) are the two where we setup a Microsoft loopback adapter on our laptops and then we are able to login to the VM for a Palo Alto firewall.  The Palo Alto firewall is inside another VM that is our network simulator called EVE-NG.  The EVE-NG software allow our instructors to give us various scenarios that have many different vendors us such Cisco, Palo Alto, Microsoft, various Linux appliances, etc.

I hope this is makes it a little eaiser to understand what we want to do.  Most of the time we can ssh to a device from the EVE-NG platform however there are times such as this where we nee to use the GUI / Web Browser to do the work and then save off the results so to get it graded.  Unfortunately for me I do not have an i10 laptop with a lot of memory so the ESX platform is my only alternative.

Thank you again for your help!!