[Bridge] Bridging vSwitches in VMwares ESXi

[Robert LeBlanc]

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 3:02 PM, Ryan Whelan <ryan.whelan at tbamerica.com> wrote:
>
> I'm having an issue bridging 2 virtual switches in VMwares ESXi.  I've made a post on the VMware forums describing the issue (http://communities.vmware.com/message/1507261#1507261).
> I have searched the internet and found a post (http://archives.free.net.ph/message/20100108.174704.efbb18cc.ja.html) by someone having the exact same issue- it looks like that post was on this list?
> In short, I have a Linux VM in ESXi with 2 vNICs- one in each of 2 different vSwitches.  A client (in my case a windows machine) on the second vSwitch can't get the MAC address of the default gateway on the first vSwitch.  Sniffing the traffic shows the arp broadcast from the windows machine making if over the linux bridge and getting responded to by the cisco gateway but the response never makes it back over the bridge.  Watching the mac table in the linux bridge shows it mistakenly associates the mac address of the windows machine to the wrong port (eth0 in my case, eth1 is the vNIC plugged into the switch with the windows box)
> Im not sure where the issue is; its really pretty simple setup.  Am I missing something simple? Is there really a bug here?
> Thanks!

You do not wan to bridge in a VMWare environment, it will only drive
you to an early grave. I've blogged my experience with this problem at
http://robert.leblancnet.us/ you will need a google wave account to
view it. In short use proxy arp instead if you can.

Robert LeBlanc
Life Sciences & Undergraduate Education Computer Support
Brigham Young University