Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    VMWARE ESX 3.5 / vSwitch w/ 2 Physical NICs / CARP / PFSense 1.2.3

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved HA/CARP/VIPs
    10 Posts 6 Posters 9.2k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • C
      carpenike
      last edited by

      Hello,

      I've posted this on the VMWare forum here:

      http://communities.vmware.com/thread/216153

      Haven't yet received a response from anybody there and was hoping someone here would have something to help me with. I've got two ESX Servers running version 3.5U4 fully updated via Update Manager as of today. Each server has two physical NICs in a vSwitch and each vSwitch has several port groups that access different network segments via VLAN trunking (Internal LAN, Public LAN, etc). When I setup CARP between two fresh pfsense routers I'm not able to get the interface to come up (both sides are in the "Backup" state) unless I remove all interfaces except for 1. I can't exclude it from the port groups, or even set it as unavailable to the vSwitch, i have to remove it entirely from the vSwitch. It doesn't matter where the VMs are (on the same server or not). Promiscuous mode has been enabled at the vSwitch layer as well.

      Any thoughts?

      Looking to replace an ISA server with two pfsense nodes running in CARP mode with two Nginx servers behind them performing reverse proxying to our development servers… All fault tolerant. :)

      Thanks,
      Ryan

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • C
        carpenike
        last edited by

        Will also mention, i've tried both Alpha releases (7.2 and 8.0) and had the same issue.

        From what I've read this seems to be an issue with CARP in general on standard BSD VMs as well.

        Thanks,
        Ryan

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • B
          bards1888
          last edited by

          I have a very similar setup working well.

          How did you setup your carpdev stuff ?

          can you show us your 'carp status' and 'Virtual IP's' from within pfsense ?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • C
            carpenike
            last edited by

            Here's the screenshots:

            Master CARP

            Master VIP

            Slave CARP

            Slave VIP

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • C
              carpenike
              last edited by

              Also, another note… When i initially configure the CARP interface, the Master side will show up as "Backup" but the Slave side will show up, "Disabled". Once I click "Enable CARP" on the carp status screen of the slave node both sides show up as "Backup".

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • C
                cmb
                last edited by

                Known issue with CARP in some circumstances, cause described here:
                http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,13434.msg92214.html#msg92214

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Q
                  quentin
                  last edited by

                  Hi,

                  I met the same problem as described. In my case it was with vSphere 4, but both CARPs stayed in backup also.
                  The problem was caused because the vSphere-server used NIC-teaming. This is a VMWare-issue. If you do not use NIC-teaming or NIC-failover it works great.

                  Best regards,

                  Quentin

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • C
                    carpenike
                    last edited by

                    @quentin:

                    Hi,

                    I met the same problem as described. In my case it was with vSphere 4, but both CARPs stayed in backup also.
                    The problem was caused because the vSphere-server used NIC-teaming. This is a VMWare-issue. If you do not use NIC-teaming or NIC-failover it works great.

                    Best regards,

                    Quentin

                    Ah that sucks. I was hoping it would go away in vsphere4. Oh well. Thanks!

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • I
                      ITCoresys
                      last edited by

                      CARP and vSphere working fine here.

                      Maybe my trick of using static 802.3ad with vSphere did the trick?

                      Too bad VMWare still doesnt do LACP :(

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Y
                        ynguldyn
                        last edited by

                        In case people still experience this issue (I did very recently), I made a writeup of the solution:

                        http://sysadminadventures.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/fixing-vm-based-pfsense-carp-announcement-echoes-when-using-teamed-network-adapters/

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • First post
                          Last post
                        Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.