Does ESXi support LLDP?

[jn865]

Apologies in advance if this question has been asked 1,000 times over - I could not seem to find a simple yes/no answer.

The switches in our ESXi 4 environment are Extreme Networks and do not support Cisco's proprietary protocol CDP. They do support LLDP, the vendor neutral equivalent of CDP. It appears that ESXi has support for CDP, but does it have support for LLDP as well? Moving forward we would find this very beneficial so we do not have to make a trip to our data center to check when we believe there is a physical connection issue.

Thanks

[vmroyale]

Hello.

It is not in ESXi 4, but it did make it into ESXi 5.0.

Good Luck!

[jn865]

Thanks for the response. ESXi 5 is not out right now, correct? I believe I read a end of August release?

[Troy_Clavell]

LLDP is not supported at this time but it's rumored to be on the VMware Roadmap

[vmroyale]

Correct - pure speculation, as nothing official has been announced about a specific date.  End of August is a safe bet though.

[Troy_Clavell]

Thanks for clearing up the rumor Brian... I was unaware that vSphere5 will support LLDP.

[vmroyale]

I'm becoming quite the ESXi 5.0 knowledge base these days.

I read about it here: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Whats-New-VMware-vSphere-50-Networking-Technical-Whitepape...

[Troy_Clavell]

yeah.. after searching a bit more, I found that article as well.  I'll tuck it away

[jn865]

Wow, lots of good information to know. Thanks .