This is my first time working with ESXi/vCenter/vSphere so please go easy on the way I have things setup because it's all been one big educated guess with bits and pieces of information that I found online.
First, I'll do my best to describe the lab setup that I have at the moment:
Physical Server (2x Xeon CPU @2.27GHz w/ 72GB RAM) running Windows Server 2012
---> VMware Workstation 11
---> vCenter VM (Windows Server 2008 R2)
---> ESXi 6 VM (We'll call this Tardis)
---> ESXi Node 1 VM
---> ESXi Node 2 VM
---> ESXi Node 3 VM
---> ESXi Node 4 VM
---> ESXi Node 5 VM
---> ESXi Node 6 VM
---> ESXi Node 7 VM
---> ESXi Node 8 VM
FreeNAS (iSCSI Datastore)
Raspberry Pi (DHCP & DNS)
I have 2x Intel Pro/1000 PT Quad Gigabit cards installed in the Server. Added them all w/ the Virtual Network Editor of Workstation and configured each one as bridged to the corresponding physical NIC. I added all 8 NICs as add-ons to the Tardis ESXi VM and then they were assigned to each of the 8 ESXi Node VMs that were then created. Created a DC in vCenter, added Tardis, created a cluster w/ HA and DRS, then added the 8 ESXi Nodes into it.
At this point everything can communicate with every other machine without any issues and where my problem starts. There are also now 9 VM Networks in vCenter, but I don't think that should matter as, as I stated, everything can talk to everything at this time.
Created a VM, CentOS 6.6, within the Cluster and it has no network connectivity. Dmesg states the link is up, but that's it. Trying to bring eth0 up with ifup results in a failure for when it tries to determine the IP information for the connection. Running dhclient will pull an IPv6 address, I'm assuming from the RPi as that's the ONLY DHCP Server, but not an IPv4 address. Setting eth0 statically does nothing either as it still cannot communicate with any other machines on the network even with the appropriate routing table, etc.
I've tried creating a Distributed Switch within vCenter and added all 8 ESXi Nodes and the one VM to it, but that didn't change anything at all.
I have a feeling that this is due to the way I have the 8 physical NICs briddged/attached to the 8 ESXi Nodes, but I'm nearing my wits end with this because I cannot find anything online in regards to this problem.
As stated initially, I'm totally new to this so any/all advice, suggestions, and (polite) constructive criticism is welcome. Obviously I'm willing to provide any additional information that may be helpful in troubleshooting this issue.
Thanks for taking a look!
--
Chris