Networking options for Hypervisor setups?

[simonduz]

I need some documentation, forum postings, videos, etc.. that explain the networking and routing capabilities for vSphere Hypervisor 4.1.

I am not sure it is going to work for my setup.

I have 1 hypervisor behind 1 router with 1 static IP and I need to figure out if I can run multiple servers that have the same port requirements as my hypervisor.

How does this work with out some type of NAT or virtual networks?

Thanks in advance.

[piaroa]

I don't think there's a scenario where networking is an issue with ESXi.

You can more or less run whatever you have (network-wise) with your hypervisor.

What kind of set-up where you thining of ?

[simonduz]

I have one physical server in a datacenter with only 1 static IP. My physical network connection is connected to a Cisco router which is the physical firewall and router for my physical server. I want to use 4.1 hypervisor to then run 1 MS 2008 Exchange server, 1 MS 2008 web server and a Linux file server.

The question I have is how do I setup virtual networks or how are the networks configured in the free version of hypervisor so I can route the required ports 80, 443, etc.. which are all shared by hypervisor, and all the server servers if I only have 1 static IP, and no built in NAT in hypervisor?

If there is any documentation that describes the network options for the free hypervisor that would be great?

[piaroa · Accepted solution]

You've got all you need to deploy such an environment:

- Connect your physical host (ESX(i)) to your network switch/s.

- Your default ESX installation should have created a vSwitch0 virtual switch

- Create VMs and install / configure guest OS. (these will be connected to your vswitch)

So, each VM will have it's IP address, and your hypervisor will also have another IP.

Port forwarding/filtering is done as with physical servers, just input the VMs IP (local) and port you wish to allow/filter.

[piaroa]

Also vSwitches work the same in free/non-free editions of ESXi. Only distributed virtual switches/3rd party vswitched need to be licensed.

[simonduz]

Thanks piaroa! You have eased my stress level some. Do you or anyone have links to documentation that explains the proper configs for virtual switches?

Oh and I forgot to ask, can I then use both network connections on my physical server, 1 for host and 1 for virtuals, establish 2 virtual switches and assign IP's for each from my cisco router, then connect to either host or virtuals through my 1 static 1 IP? I imagine this would take some router config if it's possible.

[piaroa]

Since it's a small deployment I'd configure it this way: Use vSwitch0 and add both pNICs (both network cards in your physical server). This will provide some NIC fail-over.

This vSwitch0 with 2 uplinks to your networking gear will provide you with access to the host's management interface (on its own IP) and then to every VM you have running inside your host (each one with it's own IP).

So basically you have one physical server with 2 NICs, and multiple assigned IPs. Each IP address is assigned inside the VMs guest OS.

No routing, or fancy configuration is needed. And if you loose one NIC or network cable, you'll always have the other uplink working.

Here's some network related vSphere documentation:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r41/vsp_41_esxi_server_config.pdf

The networking stuff begins in page 11.

Please award points if you've found this useful.

[simonduz]

So just to clarify, the vSwitch will handle all port requests from my 1 static external IP through my router, because I cannot configure my router to forward port 443 to multiple interal addresses? If this is correct then I am set...!

[piaroa]

Correct. You map the necessary ports to each VMs internal IP. Just bear in mind that you can't use the same external IP for the same ports in different internal IPs.

This means that you can't forward port 443 for instance to two different internal IPs, unless you use some sort of redirect.

[simonduz]

Ok.. this would be a problem since I only have 1 static IP to work with. Does anyone know of any VM appliances that can be setup easily to accept all incoming trafic and then redirect to the desired internal vm IP or am I stretching on this one?

I have no problems using vmware internally on my LAN and this is my first attempt at setting up my own server in Internet land.