I am guessing that the free ESXi Hypervisor does not support openflow or vDS. I am making that assumption as I can not find any information on how to configure it or see anything in the client GUI to do so. Any discussions regarding that seems to lead me to vCenter or the Enterprise version of the ESXi. Is that the case? Also, I tried to "fake" it by:
1. Creating a VM with multiple logical interfaces each connected to a separate vSwitch with one attached to a physical NIC
2. installing a Linux OS such as Ubuntu 13.1 or openSUSE 13 1 and installed Open vSwitch (version 1.10)
3. Created a bridge with the ports added to it with the bridge (br0) setup to obtain an IP address for management purposes. It does actually get one.
4. Created a VM and connected the adapter to one of the vSwitches. However, it was not able to obtain an IP address from the DHCP server external to the hypervisor attached to the physical NIC
5. I started a tcpdump on the NIC attached to the VM vSwitch within the "openflow" switch and I see the request comin from the VM. I also started the same tcpdump on the vSwitch connected to the NIC and see the dhcp request going out.
6. The attached switch connected to the NIC indicated it received the request and got a response from the server, which it is forwarding to the NIC. However, I do not see the responses when I do a tcpdump on the interface attached to the NIC vSwitch.
I also see that arps are also not being forwarded back from the NIC as well.
Is there a way to get an openflow vSwitch in the free ESXi Hypervisor?
Thanks.