Configure vSwitch to always forward layer 2 traffic to physical switch

[dnetz]

Hello,

For non-technical reasons that I can't discuss here, I need to investigate the possibility of configuring a virtual switch on ESXi to always send layer 2 traffic to a physical switch, even for switching traffic between two VM's that share a layer 2 domain residing on the same host. Or to put it in other words, all egress VM traffic must be forwarded to the physical network at all times. Is this possible with standard or distributed switches?

Thanks in advance,

Daniel

[joshopper]

You can place the Virtual machines on different subnets or vlans (You would have to set the vlan on the guest OS not the vswitch), that would force them out to the physical switch. You could just create separate vSwitches for those machines that you want to force to talk the switch. If you want to use this with a single vswitch I think you would need the Cisco Nexus and you could configure erspan. Otherwise I do not know of a setting to just force all traffic out to the physical switch.

[dnetz]

Sure, layer 3 traffic can be directed to your router of choice, but this would require two VLAN's and firewall configuration for every two VM's, I would need a solution that scales to hundreds of VM's in a cluster.