Hello all,
I am new to VMWare, I have a VMWare Server Console version 1.0.6 build-91891 installed on my Windows XP.
I have successfully installed an Ubuntu Guest VM using "bridged" network. I need to install an application that requires ability to send multicast packets out. I have testing via a multicast test tool whether this VM Guest client can communicate via multicast - result: it fails to communicate via IP multicast.
MY question:
What specific VMWare version supports multicast? (my application requires in normal network infrastructure that multicast is enabled in routers and IGMP snooping on) - I do not seem to find any form of documentation - VIA googling - on multicast support and VMWare Server.
I found this document though: http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/1082
Does this mean that multicast is supported only on VMWare ESX platforms?
Please advise.
thanks in advance,
Aspasia.
Hi Aspasia,
One of my colleagues brought your post to my attention, and I'm just looking at it.
The virtual switch we implement on the host OS (in your case Windows XP) is just a dumb layer 2 switch that switches based on destination MAC address, so I fully expected multicast packets to be able to traverse it.
The fact that your test tool can communicate between VMs confirms that the virtual switch itself is not dropping those packets.
I have a few more questions for you in order to better answer your question:
1. What multicast test tool are you using?
2. Which physical NIC do you have in your host that you're bridging to? I want the make and model of the NIC, as well as the version of the Windows XP driver for it through either "Device Manager" or "Network Settings".
Thanks
Multicast should work fine on hosted (VMware Server) as well as ESX. The only thing we do out of the ordinary for ESX in inject an IGMP query following a VMotion event to reduce convergence time. For details about that see:
What are the details on your Guest OS and multicast utility? Certain guest OS's may not have multicast support (Linux kernel can be built without multicast) the important thing is that the guest is sending IGMP join messages to notify upstream snooping physical switches and multicast router that it is interested in getting multicast packets for a certain range. Do you see these packets being generated by the guest? (Can use wireshark or something to view the packets)
