I Hello everyone,
I have a virtual lab environment running in VMware Workstation v12 for Linux, and my ESXi hosts are not working properly on one of the virtual networks. All of my troubleshooting suggests an issue with the nested ESXi hosts that may be a bug of some sort, but I want to make sure that I have done everything correctly first. That is why I'm posting here with the hope that if I did make a mistake that perhaps someone else can point it out to me.
Physical System
8 core Intel Xeon 2.1GHz CPU
128 GB of RAM
OS - Linux Mint 17.3 64-bit w/3.19.0-32-generic Linux kernel (fully updated as of this posting)
VMware Workstation 12 Pro - 12.1.1. build-3770994 (fully updated as of this posting)
Nested ESXi Host VM
ESXi v6.0.0 (Build 3825889, fully update as of this posting)
4 "physical" NICs (only 3 being used for now)
- all use e1000 NIC virtual hardware, but also tried vmxnet3 NICs with no difference
- vSwitch0 uses vmnic0 & 1 on virtual network vmnet16 in an active/standby pair
- vSwitch1 uses vmnic2 on virtual network vmnet18
- vmk0 used for management on vSwitch0, and vmk1 to be used for iSCSI on vSwitch1
- promiscuous mode and forged transmits enabled on all vSwitch Port Groups (enabling or disabling these features makes no difference)
Testing Done So Far
I have verified that all IP adresses and netmasks being used are correct.
Using vmkping I have pinged other nodes on the vmnet16 network successfully.
Using vmkping I have attempted to ping other nodes on the vmnet18 network, but that has been unsuccessful.
I have depolyed other non-ESXi VMs onto the vmnet18 network, and they are able to ping each other but are unable to ping or be pinged by the ESXI host.
I have tried various virtual hardware NICs as mentioned before, but with no changes in results.
I have tried using LAN segments instead of the host-only network vmnet18 with no changes in results.
When I view the state of the ESXi host's NICs via vCenter or the embedded host client vmnic0 & 1 both show network information, but vmnic2 shows no networks. Yet I know that there is a network with various VMs communicating on it. Furthermore I was able to get all of this working on a Windows system running Workstation 10 (this is the laptop that my employer provides me with).
Having built working nested ESXi labs on various platforms as well as physical environments in the past I'm very confused as to why I can't get this particular setup to work. At this point my gut tells me that it is probably a bug of some sort with the nested ESXi hosts themselves. Since I can get everything working on vmnet16 including the ESXi host management and the VCSA that I am using I am certain that my vSwitch configuration is correct (other than IP space and vmnics the configurations are bascially identical). Since I can get other VMs to communicate over the vmnet18 network I do not see how this can be a VMware Workstation of Linux physical host issue. Is there something obvious that I am missing here? I have read about nested ESXi hosts running on VMware Workstation having known issues and bugs with networking. Has anyone else encountered this?
Thanks for any help that others can provide!
Regards,
Patrick