After upgrading to ESXi 5.5, the virtual machine providing Virtual Private Network (VPN)/Router/Firewall services is unable to connect to via Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol.
Came across this interesting article from VMware:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2061834
indicating that E1000 in ESXi 5.5 no longer support PPTP and the work-around is to move to VMXNET3 NICs.
How I can resolve this issue?
un hardware that uses e1000 drivers there are no issues with PPTP tunnels, this must be some problem with “your” “hardware” vendor. You could try to use KVM to virtualize RouterOS.
In vsphere 5.1 pptp worked properly, but after upgrade to 5.5, I have issue. IBM Blade Center my vendor 
vmware support post this http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2061834
and as i understood e1000 - not working properly. and only using vmxnet3 resolve problem with pptp.
Use e1000e.
You may have to manually edit the .vmx depending on what OS type you selected for the RouterOS VM, but it works.
I tryed any types of interfaces (e1000, e1000e, flexible) but only vmxnet3 working with pptp.
i use vSphere 5.5
Wow, I just read that VMware KB article, and that’s terrible! I have to say that VMware quality control seems to have been slipping as of late. On ESXi 5.0 we encountered “purple screens of death” (PSOD) with certain Linux guests, and now we have this networking problem. After 5.5 was released, I was planning to re-evaluate ESXi 5.x, but I guess I will hold off on that. 4.1 has always been rock-solid for us, and we will continue to stick with that for the time being.
Anyway, I also found this discussion thread at VMware’s site: https://communities.vmware.com/thread/458453?start=15&tstart=0 – it sounds like the problem is that GRE packets are not making it to the guest. This would explain why it affects all PPTP traffic regardless of what the guest is (it doesn’t just affect MikroTik, or other Linux-based systems).
Just to clear something up, I don’t believe that VMware is dropping support or deprecating the non-paravirtualized interfaces (e.g., e1000). I believe that this is an honest-to-goodness bug that they will get around to fixing…eventually. Probably in 5.5u1. You can see in the discussion thread that VMware support techs are continuing to collect information from users about this bug even after publishing that KB article. Also, switching to VMXNET3 doesn’t completely solve it: the last post in that thread explains that if you run a PPTP client in the guest, it still has problems; switching to VMXNET3 apparently only fixes PPTP servers, somehow.
So my advice would be to downgrade to 5.1 (or even earlier) until this is fixed in an update to ESXi.
– Nathan
Hello,
please answer to our question: Mikrotik will ever support network card VMware? As the VMXnet? I do not know KVM and I want use my VMware vSphere Infrastructure.
vSphere 5.5 / mikrotik 6.7 / VM hardvare version 8 / Other Linux x86
I have problem with e1000 with pptp. At the flexible pptp (server and client) work, but Status: negotiation - incomplete, rate - unknown.
Only e1000 or flexible I can use. What I need for use VMXNET3 ? Upgrade VM hardware ?
You guys did not read my response. THIS IS A BUG IN VMWARE 5.5. If you want to do PPTP to RouterOS running inside of VMware hypervisor, you have to DOWNGRADE to 5.1 or older, and wait for VMware to fix their crap. VMware has NOT deprecated E1000 emulation support and they are working on the problem; read the thread on the VMware forums. (It does not sound like MikroTik is interested in including the VMXNET3 driver in x86 RouterOS.)
– Nathan
EDIT: Apparently VMware already released a fix/patch for the PPTP problem a couple of weeks ago (December 22). You can read about it here: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2063788 – see PR 1115235 in that document.
Hi
I would like to add to this, not form the bug perspective but from a throughput perspective.
I would like to see 10G throughput and currently I am being max out at 1G well bit less. and it seem like its using 1 cpu for routing …
I am getting 10G with VMXnet3 driver under linux.
is there a process for end users to build drivers ???
I understand from my reading before, that vm soft routers is not core routeros business, but maybe its growing now, I definitely see a trend there.
my 2c ++++++ for VMXnet3 drivers
and added bonus would be vmtools !!! i would love to be able to add/remove nic on the fly