As an ex VMware engineer, I would say, for people looking to run this in their homelabs to learn, using it on top of workstation pro(better if its on linux) gives you the added advantage of letting you add multiple nics in bridged mode, which will get assigned a physical IP address directly from your router for each of the individual virtual nics on the workstation layer. You can then run esxi as a VM inside of Workstation and all those nics will appear as physical nics to the ESXi VM letting you take the vmnic count to 8 nics! Great for running VSAN, HA, DRS and as well as lets you use a FreeNas VM as a iSCSI or NFS datastore.! This i found it as a better solution than running ESXi directly baremetal if your homelab does not have a management interface like that of HPE iLO or Dell iDrac.
@nealkashya, It would be great if you could share your experiences over on the VHT forums: create a topic over on the VHT forums here: www.virtualizationhowto.com/community. Thank you for the comment!
@@VirtualizationHowto Would definitely love to since I had come across your articles in our VMware blogs as well! Currently working on building up my second homeserver/lab on a spare haswell i7 machine and will try to make a guide for noobs for esxi, pfsense, K8s,docker,portainer and truenas for self hosting since I myself had to dig up quite a lot for the same and I feel it would be a great place for beginners to just visit a single topic to just get started with!
@@VirtualizationHowto On the hindsight, would also be great to have your two cents on an issue where my the webconfigurator is not accessible through the WAN ip when I add a second/LAN network to my pfsense VM on my esxi host, but works if I remove the 2nd network adapter. Works entirely fine with the same workflow on Proxmox host though so baffled.
Hello Brando Lee ! I am from Brazil and always see your vídeos about VMware ! I I would like to thank you for your videos. You speak in a very easy to understand way. Through your videos I can learn a lot
First, thank you for taking the time to make these videos - extremely helpful. This video seems to have helped me get mostly there but am curious if you have another video around resource allocation/system traffic and network resource pools?
I also have a problem with my DHCP server, webmin, on a linux VM. I have all VLAN's setup correctly within Vsphere. I changed out some switches and now one subnet isnt being recognized from my DHCP server. Any ideas where to start? The trunk port for all 3 hosts in my cluster?
I got confused at the end with the physical uplink, how traffic from virtual gets forwarded to physical. How is that configured? Do you configure the physical nics in trunk mode on both the virtual and physical ESXi nics? And when you build a host VM, you add 2 nics that are based on physical nics?
Thank Brandon, well explaint on vswitch, but i dont quite understand the last bit you saying about "upstream " are you referring to the standard alone physical vmhost?
Great explanation! I'm fairly new to VMware, and have a question. Are the vmnic0, vmnic1, etc. (physical adapters) that are connected to the physical switch trunking by default, or would the interfaces need to be setup as trunk ports?
Fred, thanks for the comment! The interfaces and default vSphere port group are just untagged interfaces that do not pass any VLAN tags. You have to explicitly create the port groups with the VLAN tags. Just think of the vmnic0 and vmnic1 as the pipe that carries the traffic. You then have to specify which traffic you want it to carry if that makes sense.
Brando, I have two 10GB nics on my lab server (single esxi8 box). Currently one is configured for the ESXi8 host on vlan99 (management), which is tagged from the physical switch that the ESXi host is plugged into. I would like to use the second 10gb nic for the lab network, vlan80, which is also tagged from the physical switch. Do I need to add a vSwitch1 to vmnic1 and then add a vmk1 VMkernel adapter? Also, if I wanted to further subdivide the vlant80, it feels like I should be adding a trunking configuration to esxi8, and assigning the vlan tags in esxi. Great video. Thanks,
Yes the management and the VM Network are individual portgroups. You have to conceptualize the vSwitch in the physical ESXi as the physical switch for the nested ESXi. The rule is, tagged traffic from the originating portgroup must match the way the physical switch handles the traffic. If it is an access/native/default VLAN then you send the packets untagged. If the physical switch is a trunk, then send the packets tagged.
Your home wifi router works in this fashion. The default/access VLAN is VLAN 1. Your phone/smart TV/tablet/alexa etc... send traffic untagged and your wifi router/switch tags the traffic with VLAN 1.
Victor, yes these are default port groups. They are just simply "untagged" port groups. So they would just assume the native VLAN of the physical switch port. However, you can add VLAN configuration to both the Management and VM Network port groups. Does this help?
Hey Rick, this is called nested virtualization. It just means you have ESXi installed as a virtual machine on a physical ESXi host. In this way, you can run an entire vsphere cluster on a single host.
Yes, there is a free version, although you don't have API access and you're limited to a maximum of eight cores I believe. If you're going to use VMware seriously for your career I would highly recommend looking into VMUG membership.
So glad to see you speak CLEAR understandable ENGLISH !
As an ex VMware engineer, I would say, for people looking to run this in their homelabs to learn, using it on top of workstation pro(better if its on linux) gives you the added advantage of letting you add multiple nics in bridged mode, which will get assigned a physical IP address directly from your router for each of the individual virtual nics on the workstation layer. You can then run esxi as a VM inside of Workstation and all those nics will appear as physical nics to the ESXi VM letting you take the vmnic count to 8 nics! Great for running VSAN, HA, DRS and as well as lets you use a FreeNas VM as a iSCSI or NFS datastore.! This i found it as a better solution than running ESXi directly baremetal if your homelab does not have a management interface like that of HPE iLO or Dell iDrac.
@nealkashya, It would be great if you could share your experiences over on the VHT forums: create a topic over on the VHT forums here: www.virtualizationhowto.com/community. Thank you for the comment!
@@VirtualizationHowto Would definitely love to since I had come across your articles in our VMware blogs as well! Currently working on building up my second homeserver/lab on a spare haswell i7 machine and will try to make a guide for noobs for esxi, pfsense, K8s,docker,portainer and truenas for self hosting since I myself had to dig up quite a lot for the same and I feel it would be a great place for beginners to just visit a single topic to just get started with!
@@VirtualizationHowto On the hindsight, would also be great to have your two cents on an issue where my the webconfigurator is not accessible through the WAN ip when I add a second/LAN network to my pfsense VM on my esxi host, but works if I remove the 2nd network adapter. Works entirely fine with the same workflow on Proxmox host though so baffled.
Hello Brando Lee ! I am from Brazil and always see your vídeos about VMware ! I I would like to thank you for your videos. You speak in a very easy to understand way. Through your videos I can learn a lot
I agree with it... very clear English to understand. Thanks for the video Brando Lee!
Hi Brandon Lee, Thank you for taking the time to make this video.
Brandon, thanks very much for your great videos. Your videos are always easy to understand and very informative.
Thank you bro..im noobs in vmware esxi and im a bit confused how this virtual switch is working..and you answer it correctly on this video
Amazing, simplified tutorial. Many thanks
First, thank you for taking the time to make these videos - extremely helpful. This video seems to have helped me get mostly there but am curious if you have another video around resource allocation/system traffic and network resource pools?
Thank you! Just got done upgrading 6.7 to 7.0.3.
None of my VMFS settings were preserved. So I got a deep dive quick.
I also have a problem with my DHCP server, webmin, on a linux VM. I have all VLAN's setup correctly within Vsphere.
I changed out some switches and now one subnet isnt being recognized from my DHCP server. Any ideas where to start? The trunk port for all 3 hosts in my cluster?
The video I needed! A Million thanks!!! Keep them coming, great job!
I got confused at the end with the physical uplink, how traffic from virtual gets forwarded to physical. How is that configured? Do you configure the physical nics in trunk mode on both the virtual and physical ESXi nics? And when you build a host VM, you add 2 nics that are based on physical nics?
Thank Brandon, well explaint on vswitch, but i dont quite understand the last bit you saying about "upstream " are you referring to the standard alone physical vmhost?
Great explanation... Thank you!!
Great explanation! I'm fairly new to VMware, and have a question. Are the vmnic0, vmnic1, etc. (physical adapters) that are connected to the physical switch trunking by default, or would the interfaces need to be setup as trunk ports?
Fred, thanks for the comment! The interfaces and default vSphere port group are just untagged interfaces that do not pass any VLAN tags. You have to explicitly create the port groups with the VLAN tags. Just think of the vmnic0 and vmnic1 as the pipe that carries the traffic. You then have to specify which traffic you want it to carry if that makes sense.
@@VirtualizationHowto thank you! That did make sense, its not so much a mystery now. Just subscribed as well.
Brando, I have two 10GB nics on my lab server (single esxi8 box). Currently one is configured for the ESXi8 host on vlan99 (management), which is tagged from the physical switch that the ESXi host is plugged into. I would like to use the second 10gb nic for the lab network, vlan80, which is also tagged from the physical switch. Do I need to add a vSwitch1 to vmnic1 and then add a vmk1 VMkernel adapter? Also, if I wanted to further subdivide the vlant80, it feels like I should be adding a trunking configuration to esxi8, and assigning the vlan tags in esxi. Great video. Thanks,
@rnwtenor Hey check out my reply in Discord....I think this screenshot I posted there will help.
When a server comes with 4 nics (2 1gb and 2 10gb), what's the best practice to use in vmware?
Are the Management Network and the VM Network port groups too? What didn't they a VLAN ID? 🤔
Yes the management and the VM Network are individual portgroups.
You have to conceptualize the vSwitch in the physical ESXi as the physical switch for the nested ESXi.
The rule is, tagged traffic from the originating portgroup must match the way the physical switch handles the traffic.
If it is an access/native/default VLAN then you send the packets untagged.
If the physical switch is a trunk, then send the packets tagged.
Your home wifi router works in this fashion. The default/access VLAN is VLAN 1. Your phone/smart TV/tablet/alexa etc... send traffic untagged and your wifi router/switch tags the traffic with VLAN 1.
@@keithmarkham943 thank you!
Victor, yes these are default port groups. They are just simply "untagged" port groups. So they would just assume the native VLAN of the physical switch port. However, you can add VLAN configuration to both the Management and VM Network port groups. Does this help?
@@VirtualizationHowto yes. thank you!
Sir can I create vlan even I don't have switch
Hi Brando, I'm a bit confused that how do you run several ESXi inside a physical vSphere cluster environment mentioned at 12:05.
Hey Rick, this is called nested virtualization. It just means you have ESXi installed as a virtual machine on a physical ESXi host. In this way, you can run an entire vsphere cluster on a single host.
@@VirtualizationHowto Thanks for your reply.
This was Great THANKS!!!
Thank you Craig for the comment! Glad you enjoyed it.
can you make a series of video about GPU on esxi, thanks.
G.S. thank you for the comment! This would be interesting and may be something I consider down the line.
If I wanted to setup vSphere and ESXI in my home lab are there free versions?
Yes, there is a free version, although you don't have API access and you're limited to a maximum of eight cores I believe. If you're going to use VMware seriously for your career I would highly recommend looking into VMUG membership.
ESXi, yes, there's a free version. For vCenter, no. However, you can get a trial. vSphere == vCenter/s managing ESXi host/s.
gj man.
keep it up
I think one or two diagrams would have helped me more
Horacio Summit
Schoen Lodge
This was very useful. Thank you