Windows XP VMs on ESXis not pinging each other

Question

I'm running a virual environment of this sort.

There's a UCS box that has several VMs. I've setup 3 Virtual ESXi VMs and vCenter Server appliance. Using the appliance, I installed 3 WinXP VMs on the ESXis. (One on each ESXi).

The IP that I've allocated to the WinXP VM are in the same broadcast domain as that of the ESXi hosts (10.0.0.x/24).

But, they don't ping each other.

vSwitch:

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EDIT: FW settings have been sorted. They still don't communicate. What's interesting is that the ESXis hosts, themselves can communicate with each other, but the underlying VMs that are in the same broadcat domain can't communicate.

192.168.0.10/24 is not a network. 192.168.0.0/24 is a network. 192.168.0.10/24 is a host in the 192.168.0.0/24 network. — joeqwerty, Mar 07 '14 at 07:26
"Request timed out". ARP entries aren't being formed either. — stealthmode, Mar 07 '14 at 13:45
@AbhishekSha can the VMs ping the host? Can the host ping the VMs? — Reality Extractor, Mar 07 '14 at 16:58

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Feb 21 '23 at 19:50

2

Windows XP doesn't respond to ping due to default firewall rules. This is expected behavior.

If you want ping replies you need to change the ICMP section of your network adapter / firewall (depending on XP SP) to allow "Incoming echo requests". See http://csg.trinhall.cam.ac.uk/tips/firewall/winxp (archive.org link) as just one example on how to do that.

edited Feb 21 '23 at 19:50

vidarlo

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answered Mar 07 '14 at 07:13

Reality Extractor

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Useful answer. I've sorted that out, but I still get error. – stealthmode Mar 07 '14 at 11:55

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 08 '14 at 03:54

The reason was because of network security policy in the standard vswitches. To make it simple, the each ESXi host has multiple VMs each having its own IP address + the IP of the ESXi itself. This means many MAC addresses. Now this ESXi is a VM itself in .52 host with its single VM assigned to a certain group. The group will not allow more than 1 MAC to transmit packets. Hence if you change the security policy to promiscuous mode accept, it will work.

Windows XP VMs on ESXis not pinging each other

2 Answers2