Distributed Switch 5.5 VLAN Trouble

[LabDevUser]

Begging for a bit of help. This is my first stab at setting up VLANs on an ESXi 5.5 Distributed Switch. I am used to physical switches... Dell & Cisco...

Setup:

Firewall

     >>     WAN1     [5x static IPs]     >>     WAN to Firewall

     >>     WAN2     [1x DHCP]     >>     WAN to Firewall

     >>     LAN1     "VMnet"     10.x.1.x/24     >>     Firewall > Port1 on Dell PowerConnect 2748 (switch does not support trunking)

     >>     LAN2     "WiFi"     10.x.2.x/24     [Wireless adapter on firewall]

     >>     VLAN1     "ESXiNet" [VMkernel + vMotion]    10.x.3.x/24     Switch1 Port1 "Tagged" >> Switch1, Port 14 "Untagged"

                     >> Port 14 on Switch1 goes to Port2 on Switch3 [Dell PowerConnect 2716]

                     >> Port 2 on Switch3 is "Tagged", Ports 3-16 are all "Untagged" and all go direct to VMkernel adapter NICs in pairs for redundancy.

     >>     VLAN2     "OfficeNET"     10.x.4.x/24     Switch1 Port1 to Switch1 LAG1 [Switch1 Ports 15 & 16]     >>     Switch2 Ports 1&2 as "LAG1" [Dell PowerConnect 2724]

     >>     VLAN3     "AdminNet"     10.x.5.x/24     Switch1 Port1 to Switch1 Ports 40-48

Problem is that I have a VLAN coming out of my Dell PowerConnect 2748 switch and going into an ESXi host. VLAN is #99. If I plug a laptop directly into the switch I pull a DHCP IP address properly from the switch on that VLAN. If I plug that LAG (or individual port if I break up the LAG) into my ESXi hosts I can not pass the VLAN through the Distributed switch.

Looking for some help. Hope the above explanation makes sense. Simply trying to get a VLAN through a distributed switch to a VM.

[HawkieMan]

My suggestion is that you set the native vlan on the ports, to some unused VLAN, so that all traffic goe as tagged. That should help

[LabDevUser · Accepted solution]

Sorry to bug the community with this setup. It seems it was my fault... or my error. I had it setup properly from the start... For anyone in the future whom finds this thread...

Firewall VLAN# 100 >> Switch Port 01 (tagged) >>> LAG Group 1 [Switch ports 15 & 16] (untagged) >> ESXi Host LAG (set default for VLAN Trunking 0-4094) >> Distributed Port Group set for VLAN #100.

The issue was that I was rebooting the physical switch and the [physical] firewall but not the ESXi host, DS, or the VMs. Because the VMs had been on prior to the configuration changes their NICs were pulling a null IP and without releasing and renewing them they were stuck without the proper VLAN DHCP IP address. All I did was go into the VMs (Server 2012r2 OS) and disable the NICs and then enable them. They then pulled the proper IP address in the subnet assigned to their VLAN.

Stupid mistake but at least it's solved.