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ESXi switch as hub?

J

joblo37pam

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I am trying to virtualize as many of the boxes sitting around my office as possible to ESXi 5, but I'm unsure as to how to configure one of them, and I need some advice from those of you that are more familiar with this than I am.

The machine is question serves as a recorder/archiver for all of the VoIP calls in our office. The physical machine has two NICs, one for the web interface of the software and one for a nic that is connected to a port on my switch that is configured to mirror all traffic from the VoIP gateway/PBX. I have an extra physical NIC in the ESXi box to dedicate to the mirrored connection.

The problem I see with this (correct me if I'm wrong) is that if the ESXi virtual switches operate as true switches, then the mirrored traffic (that is not addressed to the recorder machine) will not be passed on to the virtual nic of the VM, even if it is the only VM/NIC attached to the virtual switch.

So here are my questions. A 'yes' answer to any of them should fix my problem.
1. I'm not exactly sure what promiscuous mode is capable of, but will it allow all traffic passed on a physical nic to be passed through a virtual switch and to a virtual nic?
2. Is there any way to configure the virtual switch as a hub instead?
3. Can I connect a physical nic directly to the VM so that there isn't a switch separating them?

Thanks a ton for all of the suggestions.
 
Option 3 is probably your best bet. If your server supports VMDirectPath you can pass a hardware NIC to a VM. Then just do what you've been doing.
 
Be aware though that passing the nic thru disables features like snapshots. As far as Option 1, why is setting the vswitch promiscuous not the best solution?
 
Never tired that..interesting. So even if the traffic isn't destined for ANY virtual machine on the vSwitch it'll still pass it though. Good to know.
 
lopoetve said:
Prom mode will do nicely - everything will see everything :)
Click to expand...

Perfect. I thought that's the way it worked from the light reading I've done, but I wanted verification before I start migrating.

Thanks for the info guys!
 
NetJunkie said:
Never tired that..interesting. So even if the traffic isn't destined for ANY virtual machine on the vSwitch it'll still pass it though. Good to know.
Click to expand...

IIR my networking right - yes. anything that hits that port, configured correctly, should be seen by everything in the switch (note: I'm storage, not networking, so I haven't played with this much)
 
lopoetve said:
IIR my networking right - yes. anything that hits that port, configured correctly, should be seen by everything in the switch (note: I'm storage, not networking, so I haven't played with this much)
Click to expand...

By 'configured correctly', does that mean just turning prom. mode to 'allow' for the vswitch and vnic? There isn't anything to configure on the physical nic, is there?
 
Damn. I've yet to run into anyone on here who works with a NICE system. I install those systems.

I never heard of your vendor. usually we replace old dictaphones.

but as others have said just put the box in prom mode and it'll work so long as your span port is directed there too.

would you mind sending me some screenshots of your interface? other voice recorder systems intrigue me.
 
jadams said:
Damn. I've yet to run into anyone on here who works with a NICE system. I install those systems.

I never heard of your vendor. usually we replace old dictaphones.

but as others have said just put the box in prom mode and it'll work so long as your span port is directed there too.

would you mind sending me some screenshots of your interface? other voice recorder systems intrigue me.
Click to expand...


I could, but it really won't give you anything that you can't see on their website: http://www.vonalink.com/
 
Use promiscuous mode.

It will receive all of the traffic in that mode. I recently did a DLP implementation on a virtual environment and that is how we setup the monitoring servers.
 
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