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space0110
Contributor
Contributor

vWLC on VMware ESXi

Hi all,

I got an issue on accessing Virtual WLC's GUI in my home LAB network and I have been trying to figure out why for a few days.

vWLC is installed on ESXi which is installed on VMware Workstation on Windows 10. vWLC's management interface is assigned an IP 172.16.10.5 (with default getway 172.16.10.1/24) which on VLan 10. I have set these up during vWLC installation process via Console interface.

On ESXi switch, I created a Trunk & assigned VM vWLC into it. The uplink of the switch is attached VMnic2 which is bridged to my physical network 172.16.10.0/24 via a USB to Ethernet adapter. The adapter is set an IP 172.16.10.100/24.

My question is why I'm not able to access vWLC's GUI via its IP 172.16.10.5 from another computer which I directly connect to the USB to Ethernet adapter on the same network???

I will be connecting a physical switch into the USB to Ethernet adapter and a attach the router into it.

At the moment, I just test if vWLC's GUI can be accessed from a computer which I connect directly to the adapter as I have mentioned. Btw, ping from the computer to vWLC fails.

Do you think because vWLC doesn't understand untagged packets sent to the adapter from the PC? as I set the vWLC's management interface on Vlan 10.

I've attached some screenshots of network setting on Windows host's Network Adapter, VMware Workstation, ESXi & ESXi's vSwitch. Hope that these can make my post clearer.

Any ideas or suggestions would be much appreciated.

8 Replies
nachogonzalez
Commander
Commander

Hey, hope you are doing fine


First of all, are you aware that running esxi as a virtual machine is unsupported?

Now, let me ask you some questions:

- Is VLAN 4 propagated somewehere?
- Are you tagging VLAN 4 on ESXi switch? What happens if you untag it?
- Can you access network 172.16.10.0/24 from the windows 10?

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space0110
Contributor
Contributor

Hi mate I'm doing well.

Honestly, I'm pretty new to VMWare so I didn't know ESXi shouldn't be installed as a VM.

But as you can see my attached image, ESXi seems to run well on VMWare workstation.

I'm not sure why you mentioned to Vlan 4 as I only created Vlan 10 on vSwitch and set the management interface of Virtual WLC on Vlan 10.

Can you please check the attached image "ESXi Switch" for more details? I also attached another screenshot of my vWLC interfaces for more info.

By the way, it fails to ping from Windows 10 to vWLC IP 172.16.10.5.

My LAB progress is stuck now just because I'm not able to access vWLC from outside.

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nachogonzalez
Commander
Commander

Just to be clear
It  is not supported by VMware, you shouldn't take it to production.
It does not mean it is not going to work.

Remove the trunk nic from the VM and move the VLAN0 NIC to VLAN 10 nic, Other approach would be to remove VLAN10 tagging fropm the WLC.

Warm regards
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sjesse
Leadership
Leadership

Its fine as a vm in vmware workstation, as your not going to be running important production vms here, most people in the vsphere section will point that out as nested virtualization isn't supported but a lot of people test stuff in workstation and it works fine. I had a vmware workstation lab till I bought physical hardware for what I do.

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nachogonzalez
Commander
Commander

Thanks for the clarification Smiley Happy

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space0110
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

vWLC needs to be in TRunk because I'm going to create more Vlan interfaces on it.

I can access vWLC via untagged interface which is "Service-Port"  on my Windows 10 host but not via its Vlan 10 tagged management interface. You can check the attached image "WLC GUI Interfaces"  for more details.

Let me describe what I thought when I ping to my host from inside vWLC as below. Please feel free to correct if I'm wrong.

A Vlan 10 tagged frame generated from vWLC reaches to VMNic 2 which is bridged to network 172.16.10.0/24 via my usb to ethernet adapter (I set VLan 10 tag on this adapter, please check the image "Vlan 10 tagged adapter") --> The adapter doesn't drop this frame as it understand Vlan 10 tag --> The adapter replies a ping request by sending back a ping reply which is also tagged Vlan 10 back to vWLC --> So in this case PING should be successful. 

However, I actually failed to ping between them. Did I miss any setting or do something incorrect?

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sjesse
Leadership
Leadership

You can't trunk vlans through workstation, it strips the tags out before hand, and I've never met anyone who could get it to work.

space0110
Contributor
Contributor

OMG! I didn't know that. I've spent a few days just for nothing.

Thanks for letting me know by the way.