Problem setting up VLAN

[AlexTheBoss]

We have an existing network with Dell PowerEdge 5448 switches that we had not been doing any VLANNing on.  I now have some virtual machines on ESXi 4.1 servers that I need to isolate traffic for.  The vSwitch currently has a vm port group with a VLAN ID of none, and a management network again with a VLAN ID of none.  I added an additional port group and assigned a VLAN ID of 10.  Virtual machiens on this host have connectivity across VLAN 10.  However, VMs on this host have no connectivity on VLAN 10 with machines on other hosts.

I have the physical switch ports configured for TRUNK mode, and I have the switch ports connected to the different ESXi servers as members of VLAN 10.  I talked to the Dell PowerConnect support guys and they told me that the switch is configured properly and that the issue is a VMWare config issue (typical finger pointing, I know).

Can anyone provide some guidance here?

[f10]

Hi Alex,

Majority of the times these issues occur due to misconfiguration on the physical switch (again Im not trying to finger point ) VMware vSwitch is just a layer 2 switch and as per your configuration it seems that you are using VST VLAN Tagging, in this setup from the vSphere side all you have to do is configure the port group with the correct VLAN. Once the port group has been configured with the correct VLAN move on the the next layer of networking i.e. the physical nics on the ESX host connected to this vSwitch they should be configured as static unconditional trunk ports (so no DTP) and should tag all the VLAN packets mentioned in the port group the same set up is required at the physical switch end also.

Looking at the description it looks like the physical nics connected and the physical switch ports to which these nics connect might have issues. You may also try disabling port security.

If CDP is enabled you may use that information to check the network configuration on the physical switch.

Regards,

Arun

VCP3/4, HPCP, HP UX CSA http://kb.vmware.com/

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[rickardnobel]

I agree that it looks correct from both the vSwitch and physical switch and that the problem most likely is on the physical switch config. Have you verified that the correct ports have been used, it could be easy to mismatch the uplinks to the hosts.

Have you also verified that the VLAN 10 of the trunk port is "tagged" on the physical switches? The names could be different between switch vendors, but 802.1Q (vlan) supports one untagged VLAN id per link, so make sure that VLAN 10 is not the untagged on. (Sometimes called the "native vlan".)

As noted above check for no port security with some maximum amount of MAC addresses per port, however this should probably have been noted even before you configured VLANs.

[AlexTheBoss]

The problem ended up being on the PowerConnect switches.  I finally go that sorted out.  Thanks for the input.  It helped me trace the problem to the source.