mackiller
Hi Folks,
Here I am hoping that you can help me after over a year of me looking high and low on search engines for a solution for my unique configuration. I need two sites, running VMware guests connected as if it was a single network, on it's own internal subnet, but still have access to the routable IPs on the internet. I like OpenVPN because I can compress the traffic. I don't want two NICs on the guest OS for a few specific reasons. What I have today sort of works, but generates a ton of extra traffic with a bunch of duplicate packets (seen by wireshark).
I am using OpenVPN 2.1 on Windows. Here is my configuration (IPs slighly obfuscated):
***Site A***
-Host NIC IP: 73.7.91.56
-Host OpenVPN TAP-Win32 Adapter NIC IP: 10.10.10.102 (Subnet 255.255.255.0, Gateway empty, DNS empty)
-VMWare Guest NIC IP (Shared/Bridged to Host's TAP adapter): 10.10.10.22 (Subnet 255.255.255.0, Gateway 10.10.10.102, DNS 208.67.222.222)
-OpenVPN config:
shaper 1966080
float
dev tap
dev-node "Internal Cluster VPN"
remote SITEB.Blah.com
port 1234
comp-lzo
ping 15
ping-restart 45
ping-timer-rem
resolv-retry infinite
verb 1
-IP Forwarding enabled at the host
***Site B***
-Host NIC IP: 203.58.211.74
-Host OpenVPN TAP-Win32 Adapter V9 NIC IP: 10.10.10.101 (Subnet 255.255.255.0, Gateway empty, DNS empty)
-VMWare Guest NIC IP (Shared/Bridged to Host's TAP adapter): 10.10.10.21 (Subnet 255.255.255.0, Gateway 10.10.10.101, DNS 208.67.222.222)
-OpenVPN config:
shaper 1966080
float
dev tap
dev-node "Internal Cluster VPN"
remote SITEA.Blah.com
port 1234
comp-lzo
ping 15
ping-restart 45
ping-timer-rem
resolv-retry infinite
verb 1
-IP Forwarding enabled at the host
Ok, so the above works, except that when I enable the IP Forwarding on *either* site (necessary to have the Guest machines access the external internet), it will generate a ton of duplicate packets on the 10.x communications, seen in Wireshark. I used Wireshark because I was seeing terrible lag in internal 10.x communication when I turned on IP Forwarding, and then found why. As soon as I turn off IP Forwarding, the internal 10.x communication is smooth. Wireshark shows that when 10.10.10.21 talks to 10.10.10.22 (for example), the packet will travel twice: once via the guest MAC address, and one via the host MAC address. This sounds stupid since I set the subnet mask to 255.255.255.0, but it beats me.
Won't you please take a look and be so kind to help me? This is a non-profit organization that I help run. The two sites are redundancies because the computers are hosted on donated spots.
mackiller
So, at first I thought you misunderstood me, since I didn't use a VMWare network adapter -- I simply told VMWare Network Settings to bridge the OpenVPN adapter. However, I figured why not try doing what you said, as I tried everything else. Well, I have not idea why, but it worked!!! Can you tell me why that is? It seems to be equivalent to what I did before? Thanks a million!
For those seeking, here is what I did:
1. Created a Host-Only VMWare adapter at the host, subnet IP 10.10.10.0. Don't think it matters, but I configured the IP at the host vmware adapter to 10.10.10.1
2. Bridged the new Host-Only VMWare adapter to the OpenVPN adapter via regular windows bridging. Gave the bridged adapter the IP of 10.10.10.101
3. Told VMWare Guest to use the Host-Only adapter (not the OpenVPN adapter as before, and not the bridged adapter, though not sure if this would have worked as well)
4. Kept everything else the same.
Did that on both sites. No dup packages in general! Wow, how come? Thanks Again. Any other suggestions on the configs?
