We are planning to use vlans with ESX in the near future, we plan to go the VST route. We currently do not use any type of vlan'ing. We have existing physical (non esx) servers that will be vlaned at the physical switch port level, then setup per the esc vlan config giude for the esx boxes.
My question is, if we want all of our existing vm's and the physical servers to be on the same vlan. If we default all of these vm's and physical servers to the native vlan, does this mean those esx port groups vlan tags are blank? Or do they still have to be filled in with vlan1?
On another note, if we are not using vlaning currently does esx just assume native vlan and we could set the port groups to vlan1 now, to be prepaired for the change over in the future.
As you can see by my questions, I am not the networking person and networking has no idea how esx works.
thanks in advance!
If you want the VM's to use the native vlan network than the portgroup doesn't need a vlan id. Any other vlan with VST needs an ID.
Duncan
My virtualisation blog:
The attached pdf will help you understand about default vlan and how to set it up with ESX.
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Regards,
Stefan Nguyen
iGeek Systems LLC.
VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant
Hi,
In my experience, you need to set up your ESX service console connection(s) to use a port configured for regular hosts on your physical switch.
The ports on the physical switch to which you will patch your virtual switches, should be configured as trunked connections - this preserves the VLAN tag data.
The default port group will work just fine (i.e. you don't have to define VLAN 1),
When you start to define your VLANs on your physical switches, just create new port groups on your virtual switches for each one, with the VLAN ID defined.
Another tip would be to just advertise the VLANs required to the trunked connections, otherwise you will be wasting CPU resources in your switch.
why should we setup the service console differently?
Because you cant use trunked vlans on install.
--Matt
alright.... I am a little confused on this one. We would be installing off of a cd/dvd so why would this be an issue?
Then no, its not a big issue.
--Matt
Just to clearify are you talking about installing windows into vm's on the esx host? or installing esx itself. I was talking about installing esx from the cd.
Matt's talking about installing ESX using an automated network install (PXE install). Since PXE can't use tagged VLANs, you need the COS on the native VLAN. If you're installing from CD, you don't have to worry about it.
Ken Cline
Technical Director, Virtualization
VMware Communities User Moderator