Cannot contact esxi hosts from vCenter virtual machine

[JrcLsaTeam]

Hello all,

I have two esxi 5.1 hosts, I've just installed and configured vCenter on a virtual machine on one of the hosts.

vCenter server has 2 interfaces: nicA (public), nicB (private).

esxi hosts have four interfaces: nicC-nicD (management vmkernel), nicE-nicF (public network)

I've configured the vCenter on the public network (nicE-nicF)and all is running fine with remote desktop etc; I've created a vm network on the same vswitch of the esxi management vmkernel and connected the private nic of the vCenter to this. Both vm network and esxi management have the *** same vlan id ***.

There's no way to contact hosts from inside the vCenter at this point using this interface, cannot add hosts or open vsphere client for management.

Is there a way to configure a vm network with the same vlan id of the esxi management on the same esxi hosts? (I've also tried on 2 different vswitches with no success...)

regards

U

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the COmmunity - Yes what you want to do is possible - either by the method you describe or using a seperate virtual switch and connecting it to physical switch that is configured for the vlan id - how are you trying to add the ESXi host - by host name or IP addres? If by host name is there a DNS server or have you updated the hosts file? Can you ping the ESXi hosts ip address from the vCenter VM? Are the vCenter and ESXi hosts using the same IP subnet?

[JrcLsaTeam]

thanks for the quick reply. I'm trying to add hosts using ip addresses and at the moment I cannot ping them from the vCenter virtual machine. vCenter and esxi are on the same subnet, btw vCenter can ping _some_ other hosts in the same subnet...sounds very strange...

[weinstein5]

Can you post a screen shot of the network configuration of your ESXi host -

[JrcLsaTeam]

It would be nice to have a screenshot but after a reboot for some reason I'm no longer able to connect to esxi hosts (both)....I'll post a screenshot asap, thanks again

[JrcLsaTeam]

I just realized that after the reboot, servers messed up the connections. I'm speaking about two old HP Blade BL20p G4 which don't seem to be supported for esxi 5.1, right?