I installed ESXi on Oracle Virtual Box 4.1.16 on a Windows 7 machine. The virtual machine setup is as follows:
Windows 7 (processor i7, 16GB ram)
VirtualBox4.1.16
centos-1 ! 192.168.56.20 (static ip eth0)
ubuntu-1 ! 192.168.56.50 (static ip eth0)
esxi5-1 ! 192.168.56.30 (static ip - able to connect from vSphere on Win7 host)
vm-ubuntu-1 ! 192.168.56.60 (static ip eth0)
vm-ubuntu-2 ! 192.168.56.70 (static ip eth0)
centos-1, ubuntu-1 and esxi5-1 can ping among each other. vm-ubuntu-1 and vm-ubuntu-2 can ping each other just fine. However, when i try to ping from centos-1/ubuntu-1 to any of the esxi5-1 guests or vice-versa, it always times out. There are no firewall (iptables) rules configured anywhere. Here are some observations while trying to the problem.
* esxi5-1 guests does show the centos-1/ubuntu-1 mac in its arp table and vice-versa. However, the esxi5-1 guests show the arp entry after about 15 seconds of the ping start. It also times out quickly and I can see arp requests generated by these guests for centos-1/ubuntu-1
* On running tcpdump on centos-1/ubuntu-1, its seen that the esxi5-1 guests send multiple arp requests, each of which is replied. Also, ICMP echo request is received and ICMP echo reply sent by these hosts. That reply never reaches the esx5-1 guests.
* Doing the reverse, pinging from centos-1/ubuntu-1 towards esxi5-1 guests and capturing packets on the later, its observed that no packets reach the esxi5-1 guests.
* To address any arp related issues, I hard coded the IP/MAC in the arp table for cento-1 and vm-ubuntu-1 i.e. # arp -s <<<IP>>> <<<MAC>>>
. Made no difference.
* One interesting observation is that if I set network interface of vm-ubuntu-1/vm-ubuntu-2 to DHCP, they contacts and successfully acquires IP address from the VirtualBox native DHCP server running at 192.168.56.100. The virtual interface 192.168.56.1 on the physical machine can also reach centos-1/ubuntu-1 but not vm-ubuntu-1/2
* The physical machine is not stressed (process/memory) by running all these vms at the same time. Infact I created esxi5-2 with two guests inside it as well. They would also talk to each other just fine. But not to outside vms. Also esxi5-1 guests won't talk to esxi5-2 guests.
My question is, has someone succesfully run ESXi in VirtualBox. Do I need to configure something extra to enable internal esxi5-1 guests to communicate with guests outside esx or is it just the VirtualBox virtual switch that is messing around with the packets going towards the ESXi guests.
Thanks,
Rashid.
