VM PortGroup not working

[Padou]

Hello there, first of all, sorry for my far from perfect english.

I'm facing a really weird problem here, after adding an ESXi host into a cluster and configuring it as all its peers, one of the VM Portgroup is not working properly, when DRS or my right hand puts a VM using it on this brand new host, the VM gets no connectivity.

I double checked the network configuration on the ESXi, I triple checked the ports configurations on the physicals switches, as its basically the same as surrounding ESXi/ports it was easy to see that's all sounded good.

So why am I here and not replacing NICs or changing switches ports? Well, when I add an VMkernel port on the very same vSwitch, using the very same VLAN as the faulty VM Portgroup, it's simply working.

If someone have an idea...

Message was edited by: Padou

[HawkieMan · Accepted solution]

Do you have native vlan 1 on the trunk ports? If so, set native vlan to an unused vlan ID so you force tagging of vlan 1 traffic as well. Always good practice on esx trunks

[Padou]

Hello sir,

So the VLAN 1 was not the native port on those trunks, but an used VLAN was the native one.

I tried to put an unused VLAN as native, then I used a test VM to test connectivity on the faulty VM PortGroup, it actually worked!

Then I reverted to the original config (used VLAN as native), it's still working.

I'll put the esx back on production monday.

I will not try to understand why, as it's Friday in my brain too, but still:

If I understand you right, I should tag all used VLANs on esx's trunks?

Anyway, thanks for your answer.

[HawkieMan]

Its my experience and recommendation that you make sure all VLAN traffic is tagged. Also I have seen that using a native vlan that is part of your portgroups may make it stop sending traffic through. SO just to make sure, set a native VLAN you just have as a dummy VLAN on the switch, like 999 or something. I tried having a native VLAN other that the default 1 as most posts suggested it should work then, but I did experience traffic freeze now and then with that, so setting it like I describe gives you peace at mind.

Dont forget to mark as solved and answer as correct :9

[Padou]

I'll blindly follow your recommendation as i can't explain what happened.

I'm a believer xD.

Thank you again.