ESXi VLAN issue

[billdossett]

Hi,

any network gurus out there can help me with this?

Two ESXi hosts plugged into a Cisco 6509 switch, apparently running Cat OS (I have never seen the site myself, so just working over the ether)

There are 5 VLANs.   The problem is that one of the VLANs is not showing a VLAN id when I see it listed under the network adapter properties.  As shown in the attached screen grab.

This happens on both the hosts in the cluster... but a different VLAN tag is missing on each host.... and the fact that the VLAN name is missing is significant as I can't use it.

On the other host, VLAN 40 is missing... and that is the range of IPs that my hosts mgmt network is in... if I put 4095 in the VLAN, it works, however if I put VLAN 40 for mgmt network, I lose connection to it. Seems like a native VLAN problem or something, but I don't have access to physical switches.. and I haven't worked with Cat OS... but the networking people say that the port is trunked and it should be ok.

Any ideas on what could cause this... sorry, I know it's more of a physical networking issue, but hoping someone might have seen something like it before that could help.

Thanks

Bill

[JPM300]

I'm going to assume you are using a VDS by the sounds of things.

How is your Virtual Distributed Switch setup for VLANS?

[rcporto]

Ask the networking team:

1. I know the ports are trunked, but are the trunking allowing pass all VLANs, or there are any filter (default is allow all VLANs)?

2. Which is the native VLAN on ports of the trunking (default is VLAN 1)?

And paste your networking configuration, including port groups and VLANs.

[billdossett]

Actually, no, this is not a VDS yet.  It is a standard virtual switch... the vlan is set in the mgmt network as vlan 40.  When I do that however, I can not ping the mgmt ip address.  When I set the vlan to be 4095, this is using the DCUI, I can then vmkping out and ping the vmk ip address.  I do plan on using a VDS, but not until I can get this issue sorted out.

[JPM300]

I suspect you don't have your VLANs on your switch setup properly.  Typicalyl 4095 just accepts all VLAN;s when you set it to that in VMWare.  I have a feeling you might think management is VLAN 40 but on the switch its tagged as something else.

Is there anyway to find out the VLAN information on the switches

[billdossett]

I have been working with the networking team on this and they say there are no filters and all vlans are allowed.  They would have to configure specifically to not allow a vlan and they haven't done that.  They have trunked ports for us before... frequently and this has never been an issue.  I am assuming it has something to do with the fact it is Cat OS and not IOS and the show running on this port does not display as it would in IOS...  I think I can probably get access to the switch tomorrow myself, so I am going to have to bone up on Cat OS and see if I can figure out what is causing this.  The fact that on two different ports on the same switch, that one single, but different vlan is not showing up with a vlan name as per the screen grab, is a clue.

[JPM300]

Yes that is strange.  You should only see the one, I would think as I have never seen that particular issue on a switch before.  If they are allowing all VLANs on that trunk group they probably have it set from 1-4095

So you can set your VLAN tag on the vswitch to whatever you want and it will get passed.  Its odd 40 doesn't work and other random ones don't work on the other hosts

[billdossett]

well, if you look at the screen grab, you can see that 4 our of the 5 ip ranges have vlan info.. on the second host that is plugged into the same switch, the ip range has a the same 5 ip address ranges observed, but on that port the ip address range which is vlan 40 actually has vlan 40 next to it and that host works.  They say that both ports are configured the same.  Hopefully, if I get access to the switch tomorrow, I will be able to look at the native vlan and see if there is anything there that might have been configured before they trunked the port that could be affecting this.

[JPM300]

I don't know if you have this done yet or not, but you can turn on CDP on a Standard vSwitch

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100706...

The command on how to enable it from the CLI:

esxcli network vswitch standard set –c both –v vSwitch#

This may give you some more information from the VI client that could help figure it out??

[billdossett]

CDP already on, I was looking at it today, but didn't finish analyzing what I saw.  vlan info in CDP says it is vlan 40... and it should say vlan 1, so, something not right on the trunking for sure.  I just got credentials for the switch so will be able to look at it myself in the morning.. thanks for reminding me to look at that!