Vlan Windows 2003

[Dranizz]

I'm kind of beginner with Vlans but I want to do something clean, so here's the stuff.

My VC server has 2 Nics, one is connected to my production LAN and the other one is connected to my isolate iSCSI LAN.

The Nic connected to the iSCSI LAN is used for VCB, as my VC server is also my VCB Proxy server.

What I want to do is use my 2 physical switchs that I used for iSCSI LAN to also be used to Isolate the Management traffic. So only the VC server will have access to the SC of the hosts.

Problem is, I only have on nic for the iSCSI traffic and the Management traffic.

I thought about VLANs but how can I assign 1 nic in Windows 2003 with 2 IP address, one that is VLAN tagged and one that is not?

If ESX is tagging the traffic out of the SC, do I need to do something on my physical switchs?

Thanks.

[JeffDrury]

Is your VC server a physical box or a VM? If it is physical you will need to buy another physical NIC, as Windows does not support VLAN tagging. You cannot have one NIC on a Windows 2003 server that is accepting VLAN tags and one that is not.

If your VC Server is a VM then you can simply add another vNIC and create a port group for the VLAN.

[Dranizz]

Yeah, it's a physical server.

I though that with Broadcom Advanced control suite I could do that.

[JeffDrury]

I am not familiar with the Broadcom Advanced Control Suite. If it does support VLAN tagging then you will need to set the port on your switch, that is connected to the Broadcom card, to trunk mode. That should cause the switch to forward all VLAN tags to the Broadcom card and the ACS should then interpret the network traffic.

That being said given past experience with Broadcom cards and software I would recommend purchasing another NIC and not relying on Broadcom software to control your network. During support calls you may run into issues with your iSCSI vendor or VMware when they find out you are using 3rd party software to control VLAN tagging. Given that you could probalby get another NIC for less than $100 it may be worth the expense, versus having to deal with an additional layer of software in the configuration. Also from an achitectural standpoint I would think it would make sense to dedicate a full NIC to iSCSI especially since this is also your VCB server.

[Dranizz]

So, if windows cannot TAG traffic, it has to be done by the switch port?

Can you mix vswitch tagging with physical switch port tagging?