Here's my setup:
IBM BladeCenter 8852 Chassis/HS21 Blades
Nortel Layer 2/3 GbE Switch (6-port)
On the switch, I've set up 6 different VLANs, each with their own ID. I input the VLAN ID during ESX Server install, input all IP/DNS information correctly, but I can't ping the gateway. And by that, I mean that, for example, I put in the IP for the blade as 1.2.3.4, and put in the gateway as 1.2.3.1, and still can't ping it even when I have the correct VLAN ID entered. I've tried it without the VLAN ID and that doesn't work either.
I'm pretty much at a loss at this point. I've had our IT department check out the jacks and they're fine. If you set up a Windows machine you can put in any IP in our assigned ranges and hit up their gateway no problem. However, with ESX Server I can't see anything.
Is there something I'm missing on the VMware side? Based on the simplicity of the install I'm guessing this stuff should just work. The only thing I can see is that there appears to be a pair of Broadcom NICs for each blade, 4:0:0 and 6:0:0. But then, I really have no clue as to how VMware handles NICs. An ifconfig just gives me a bunch of virtual nics, and a route gives me some really confusing IP and gateway info:
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
1.2.3.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 vswif0
169.254.0.0 * 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 vswif0
default 1.2.3.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 vswif0
If this stuff is RTFM, let me know and I'll dive into the voluminous VMware docs. But if somebody could explain how this routing table corresponds to the NICs in my machine, that would help tremendously. At this point I'm sure it's something that I'm doing incorrectly either in my Blade hardware or with ESX Server.
-j