How to port forward from internet > home router > ESXI host > VMs

[vesperi]

I am having troubles figuring out what i'm doing wrong with networking to my ESXI host, and onward to the VMs within from my internet gateway / home router. 

I have an ESXI host with 3 vms connected to a network switch which is directly connected to my home router to get to internet.  On the same switch i have a stand-alone file server and multiple home pcs.  All of the home pcs and the standalone file server show ports open to the outside when port checking after setting up port forwardings to them on the router, however nothing that i setup for port forwardings for any of the VMs within the ESXI host environment will show open to internet.  

I have the network setup as follows within ESXI:

ESXI host (192.168.x.30)  connects to vswitch0 for "management network" (VLAN 0)   - uplinks to vmnic0

VMs (192.168.x.5 / 6 / 7) all connect to vswitch1 for "VM network' (VLAN 0) - uplinks to vmnic1

i also had these original setup to the same vswitch, but was reading that management and vm network needed to be on their own uplink / vswitch (not sure if that is actually true).

I cannot for the life of me get the port forwardings to work, but within the VM environment - i can get to the internet, show proper IP DHCP or Static from the router (outside ESXI network) and ping to internet / show i'm on internet.  So it looks like it just isn't passing port forwardings through from VMs to ESXI and thus services can't get out to internet or internet get back to them.

What am i possibly doing wrong?  (i have network background as i work as a network administrator/tech for a career), but can't figure if this is something i don't understand in the VMware / ESXI environment doing this.

looking for expert guidance here.

-Mike

[jburen]

I assume that the IP addresses of the VMs are in the LAN range of your router. And also in that same range are your file server and PC. Then port forwarding for the VM should work the same as for your file server. Could it be a local OS firewall inside the VM?

[vesperi]

jburen​ you are correct in that assumption... all of them are in the same IP Subnet, hence share the same gateway being the router.  All should in theory be port forwardable from the router.  I had already speculated the OS Firewalls in the VMs too, but one being Win 2012 R2, i turend off the firewall completely in windows and it still behaved the same.  the other VMs being linux, using IPtables.