VMware 5.5: VMs cannot ping host, but host can ping VMs

[chris13]

Hi,
hopefully funny one:

VMware Workstation 5.5 on XP SP2,
two guests W2K3 Enterprise, SP2

Network was setup as "Host only", DHCP and NAT disabled.
Host: 10.1.1.1
VM1: 10.1.1.10 (DC)
VM2: 10.1.1.11
Everything netmask 255.255.255.0

Connections between guests are fine: ping, shares, join domain etc...

Host can ping all guests, use shares etc.
But both guests cannot ping or create a connection to the host on 10.1.1.1 !

Firewall disabled in guests and on host, on host I removed everything but VMnet1, even reinstalled VMnet1 adapter.

Any ideas?

 

[Arisap]

I am pretty certain that the "host" does not participate in host-only vswitches.

 

[chris13]

Then the name should be "guests only" ;-)
No, it on the same switch, it could connect to all the guests but the other direction was not working.

It was the "Cisco VPN Service" who blocked all incoming data which was not related to a connection which was initiated by my machine, although I had no VPN connection active, and the VPN-client was not running...
Found out by trying to get a file using FTP: connecting to server and issueing CWD was no problem, but as soon as the FTP server initiated an additional connection to transfer data to my machine, it got stuck ;-)
Stopped that service and everything was fine in both directions...

Cheers,
Chris

 

[Arisap]

Right. In Workstation the NIC interface can be added to the switch and NAT and DHCP disabled keeps the traffic from leaving the NIC. In ESX the host does not participate in "host only" vswitches

 

[chris13]

Thanks a lot, good to know!