Freenas server connected to VMWARE workstation

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Hello

I have a dedicated server booting up to Freenas 8.3 using a USB stick. I can connect to it fine from vcenter server and physical server. The Freenas box is a physical server. I also have a physical server running VMware workstation with ESX and Vcenter virtual servers.

Summary:
VCENTER Vmare server, 192.168.159.x (Running in VMware w/s using host only)
ESX Host, 192.168.159.x (Running in VMware w/s using host only)
Freenas physical HP NL540 server 192.168.1.x

The issue I have is I can get the ESXs to ping everything but I can not get Freenas to see the ESXs or the VCENTER server when I ping them from the shell. Therefore, I can not get the ISCSI to connect to the Freenas storage. I can not ping the Freenas server by IP or host from the ESX either. Freenas is already configured to allow the IP range for the NFS (192.168.159.x/24) - subnet 255.255.255.0

I did get this all working at one stage so I know it works but I can remember how I configured this all. My ESX and VCENTER are on the same network, example, 102.168.159.x. my Freenas server is on 192.168.1.x.

I am using HOST ONLY. My VCenter also has bridged NIC to connect to the Internet.

I am not that good when it comes to networks so my question and still learning VMware workstation (not sure how I got this all working when I put this togother months ago). Should I be using HOST ONLY or NAT ? Is this is a default gateway issue? Please advise what I am doing wrong.

I have spent 2 days trying to get this working so any help appreciated.

Thanks in advance
 

pirateghost

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You say you aren't good at networking yet you have 2 different subnets. It would appear your networks don't know anything about each other. You either need static routes configured or you should be using bridged networking. Using host only means your vms can only talk to the host machine. Natted means it uses the host machine as a 'router'
 
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ok. I am now configuring the VMS to use bridged. The Vcnter server will require another NIC for the vmkernel I suppose. In the past, every time I configured a NIC with a static IP, it changes to it does not have access to the Internet. The strange thing about all this is I am sure I did not use Bridged before when this was all working but I understand what you are saying. I will provide an update shortly.
 
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OK. I set it up to use Bridged. I can log into each ESX and can ping other ESXs and Freenas. I am also using VMKPING but as soon as I connect an ESX in VCENTER, it drops so I even though it appears I have made progress, I have hit another issue. I do a connect and it drops again indicating a hearbeat issue with port 902 but this makes no sense. I disabled Windows firewall and can use VMKPING from the ESXs and get a reply. A look at various forums indicates the issue might be due to the IPs changing for ESXs and VCenter and also Freenas but I have checked the VPXA.cfg and this specifies the correct IP so the next stage is to re-install the agents to see if this does the trick.

As a newbie to Freenas, I noticed it needs my broadband on to connect to my Freenas server which is a spearate server outside of VWMWARE workstation where i have VMs for ESXs and VCENTER. Now, I did manage to get this all up and running a few months ago usin 192.168.159.X as opposed to 192.168.1.x. I believe I used HOST ONLY. I know this will work for the virtual machines, which mean the separate physical server running Freenas is the one that is issue. Any suggestions as to how I can get this all up and running on 192.168.159.x again from 192.168.1.x? Router IP is on 192.168.1.x and when I tried doing this before, I could notget Freenas to see anything as it was on a different network.

In Freenas I have also configured it so for the shares 192.168.1.0/24 is specified so Freenas can talk to the ESXs. Not sure what else I can do. Any other ideas? The VCenter server is on a domain. Freenas is set to local but it has always been set to Local anyway and worked before I changed all the IPs.

Any ideas? In the meantime I am going to go on various VCenter forums and see what comes up. I am also building a brand new VM with Server 2008 intalled so I can re-install VCENTER as a last resort to fix this.
 

vegaman

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I'm not sure I'm understanding what you're trying to achieve here...
Host only means just that - you can't communicate with anything but the host.
Is there any particular reason you want the VMs to be on a different subnet?

From what I'm getting so far you're trying to connect two different networks (192.168.1.0/24 and 192.168.159.0/24) but you haven't set anything to do the routing for that (i.e. these networks don't know one another). Even if you did set that up it won't work with host only anyway.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 4
 
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Vcenter was working perfectly well for months when everything was on 192.168."159".x. Now I have changed the network to use 192.168.1.X it is no longer stable and my ESXs keep disconnecting. I f anyone knows how I can get this back to using 192.168.159.x rather than 192.168.1.x that might do the trick. Otherwise, If you change the IP address for Freenas, does this cause a problem? Do I need to make any other changes in Freenas as I can not see anything in the config.

It could be that Vcenter has a config now that still wants to point to the OLD Ip address for my Freenas box. I have no idea but I can see my storage reverted to the 192.168.159.x address but this is no longer valid.

I know this is all linked to Freenas because I disabled the ISCSI adapter pointing to Freenas and my ESX has not gone down yet. Great but what I am going to do in VCENTER with out my storage?
 

vegaman

Explorer
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To help clarify things a bit, are you running VMWare Workstation or ESXi?
What host (and its subnet) are you performing the maintenance from?
What hosts (and their subnets) do you want to connect to each other?

You mention you previously had everything on 192.168.159.0/24, do you mean freenas was also running as a VM?

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 4
 
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VMware Workstation running all VMs. Freenas on a dedicated "physical" server.

Everything was running on 192.168.159.0/24 which includes all my Virtual servers (ESXs and VCenter) as well as physical server running Freenas.

Network using now is 192.168."1".x. Was previously working on 192.168."159".x so I thought I would try get it working on 159 again to no avail as all was talking but nothing could see Freenas server so changed to new subnet and all talking but still an issue.

Now, this could be Vcenter but I a trying to rule out Freenas and understand the VMWARE workstation network side as well.
 
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This is resolved. Looks like it was actually vcenter so I removed everything in the cluster and started from scratch and re-created. Posted queries here in the event it was Freenas. I am still unsure how I managed though to het this all on 159 but I don not really care any more.

Thanks
 
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