Vswitch on The IT Hollow

Test Connections from an ESXi Host Using vmkping

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 16:19:10 +0000

If you’ve been in a situation where you need to test connectivity, you’ve probably used the ping command. But what do you do when you’re trying to test connectivity from an ESXi host? Luckily there is a command called vmkping that will allow you to test from the host.

The first thing that you need to do is to SSH into your ESXi host. Turn the SSH Service on from the Configuration –> Security Profile Tab. Then you can use your favorite ssh client and remote into your host.

Software iSCSI load balancing in ESXi 5

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:14:56 +0000

When you team NICs together in ESXi 5 you can pick from a variety of load balancing techniques to determine how traffic should flow over the adapters. You might think that setting up software iSCSI initiators in ESXi would be done in a similar manner. Add a VMkernel to a vSwitch, add a couple of adapters and set a teamingfailover policy. It turns out that this is not the case. You could setup a software iSCSI initiator this way, but it won’t provide you the teaming or failover you’ve intended.

VMware Network Traffic Routing

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:00:27 +0000

VMware has lots of ways to setup networking on their ESXi hosts. In order to set this up in the best way for your needs, it’s important to understand how the traffic will be routed between VMs, virtual switches, physical switches and physical network adapters.

Before looking at an example, we should review some networking 101. Machines on the same vlan on the same switch can communicate with one another (assuming there is no firewall type devices in the way). Machines on different vlans on the same switch cannot communicate unless the traffic passes through a router.