Need help setting up Test Lab network

[Skarlok]

I have the VLAN setup on the Cisco switch (4506) and I have the port set aside in ESX (3.5) in it's own switch but I'm not able to get the systems on that switch to communicate. They don't seem to see each other even though they're of the same subnet and same vlan. Ideas?

[bradley4681]

What systems are you trying to get it to talk to? Are these systems on the same switch outside of ESX, i.e. physical servers? Are they guest machines not talking to each other?

Cheers,

Bradley Sessions

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[JeffDrury]

Can you post a screenshot of your vSwitch configuration?

[Skarlok]

Ok. I've gotten the systems to talk to each other again (one of the servers got vmotioned off the host)... But I still can't communicate with the Cisco Switch (gateway of 172.16.0.1)... Here's a screenshot of my ESX networking setup.

[bradley4681]

I see you have vlan tagging setup on the lab network but not on the production network. Have you tried putting the vlan id on the production port group?

Cheers,

Bradley Sessions

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[Skarlok]

The production port group works without a hitch... I can put it in but I don't see as how that might help me in the Lab network case.

[bradley4681]

Maybe i'm a bit confused, where is the switch in relation to your ESX network and the screenshot you attached earlier. Is the lab vSwitch or the production vSwitch connected to it?

Cheers,

Bradley Sessions

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[JeffDrury · Accepted solution]

Looks like this may be a VLAN configuration issue. On the Cisco switch is the port connected to the test network NIC set up as a trunk port? If it is you need to make sure it has VLAN 400 assigned to the trunk. If it is not set as a trunk port then you need to remove the VLAN tag from your virtual switch. If the Cisco port is not set as a trunk then the Cisco switch is not sending VLAN tags to the vSwitch and the vSwitch is looking for packets tagged as 400 and not passing anything else to the VM's. Either the trunk setting or the vSwitch VLAN setting need to be changed to resolve communication.

If the end goal is to have multiple VLAN's show up on the test network vSwitch then I would go the route of setting the Cisco port to a trunk. If you just want one VLAN to show up on the test vSwitch then I would keep the Cisco port set the way it is assigned to VLAN 400, and remove the VLAN reference from the vSwitch.

Hope this helps, please award points if this was helpful.

[JeffDrury]

If the Cisco port is set up as a trunk you will see something like this:

switchport mode trunk

switchport trunk allowed vlan add 1-400

switchport encapsulation 802.1q

If the Cisco port is not set as a trunk you will see something like this:

switchport mode access

switchport access vlan 400

[Skarlok]

That was it exactly. It's not a trunk port on the 4506 so I took off the 400 from the vSwitch configuration. Everything is good now. Thanks a ton!