ESX 3.01 VLAN Config Problem

[sjohnson0678]

I am trying to get a number of ESX servers up and running on our network and am having some issues with the vlanning. We use vlan 1 for our private ip space for management addressess (ie. Service Console). We would also like to place some virtual machines onto that vlan as well (ie Virtual Center). However whenever I set the vlan id of the service console to anything other than 0 it drops off the network. With the sc vlan id 0 I am unable to ping the vm that is also on that vlan however. What am I doing wrong here? Can this even be done?

Below is the output of esxcfg-vswitch, esxcfg-vswif, esxcfg-vmknic

-

---

Switch Name Num Ports Used Ports Configured Ports Uplinks

vSwitch0 32 6 32 vmnic1,vmnic0

PortGroup Name Internal ID VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks

64.68.35 portgroup5 12 0 vmnic0,vmnic1

64.68.32 portgroup4 4 0 vmnic0,vmnic1

64.68.33 portgroup3 3 0 vmnic0,vmnic1

10.10.50 portgroup1 1 1 vmnic0,vmnic1

VMkernel portgroup6 20 1 vmnic0,vmnic1

Service Console portgroup0 0 1 vmnic0,vmnic1

esxcfg-vswif

-

---

Name Port Group IP Address Netmask Broadcast Enabled DHCP

vswif0 Service Console 10.10.50.21 255.255.255.0 10.10.50.255 true false

esxcfg-vmknic

---

Port Group IP Address Netmask Broadcast MAC Address MTU Enabled

VMkernel 10.10.51.21 255.255.255.0 10.10.51.255 00:50:56:60:53:6a 1514 true

[mwheeler1982]

Several Questions:

\* What is your physical switch?

\* Can you post the its configuration for that specific port?

\* Do you have 802.1q and trunking enabled on the switch port?

[sjohnson0678]

The physical switch is a Cisco Gigabit switch for IBM BladeCenters. 802.1q and trunking is enabled on the port, its the default for this switch. The config is below.

interface GigabitEthernet0/1

description blade1

switchport mode trunk

spanning-tree portfast trunk

spanning-tree bpdufilter enable

end

[mwheeler1982]

Hmm.. I'm not a networking guy, but here's my configuration:

interface GigabitEthernet1/0/29

description vmware-svr-4-eth1 (trunk)

switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q

switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,131,133,506,951

switchport mode trunk

spanning-tree portfast

[Ryan_Witschger]

Even after the VLAN are allowed for the switch port, they need to be added to the VLAN database on the switch itself. I don't know how to do it, but that is the step that my network team always forgets. Without the VLAN database the tagged packets are dropped at the switch.

[jspilon]

VLAN 1 cannot be used without some changes...

See "Native VLAN Issue (a.k.a. VLAN 1 Issue)" page 9 of the following paper

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_vlan_wp.pdf

[sjohnson0678]

The vlan in in the db. The port is allowed access to all vlans (which is why it isnt listed in the config) 802.1q is the encapsulation provided on this particular switch.

I wondering if it is a weird ESX problem with vlan id 1. We have other ESX servers with the sc on a specific vlan (4) and also vms on that vlan and it works fine. It just seems to be vlan 1.

Just looking for a quick confirmation if any knows before I open a SR.

[jspilon]

look at the PDF I posted above...