Communication between different port groups without uplinks?

[thomps01]

Using a standard switch, if I create multiple port groups because I want to have different traffic options configured but this is an internal only switch (no uplinks) can virtual machines communicate between the different port groups?

I'm not using VLANs, just a flat network.

[arturka]

thomps01 wrote:

Using a standard switch, if I create multiple port groups because I want to have different traffic options configured but this is an internal only switch (no uplinks) can virtual machines communicate between the different port groups?

Hi

Nope

Artur

[thomps01]

Thanks for your response but you are incorrect.

I decided to try this configuration in the lab and the results show that virtual machines connected to the same vSwitch without any uplinks can communicate with other virtual machines on the same vSwitch even if they are on different port groups.

It is not possible for a virtual machine to communicate outside of the vSwitch it is connected to, so if you had 2 virtual switches without any uplinks but residing on the same ESXi host, virtual machines could not communicate between them.

Hope someone finds this useful.

[arturka]

Hi

sorry for making confusion, I misread you post, I though that you were asking about communication between VMs connected to separate vSwitches without uplinks, of course, if VMs are within single vSwitch that can communicate

Artur

[rickardnobel]

A portgroup is just a simple method to configure a number of virtual patch ports the same way, just like configuring several ports on a physical switch. As long as you do not set things that would make computers unavailable for communication on a physical switch (like different VLANs) it will work just the same on the vSwitch.