VLAN Tagging setup

[jcorbin121]

I am pretty new to VSphere, going to the install/configure class in Nov but had a consultant come in to do a dog & pony show and he said that we could do VLAN tagging to allow all of our VLAN's to communicate via a single distributed switch connected to 1 physical switch port. I can't get it to work though - can I get some hints on what I have wrong? Attached screenshot - any help is much appreciated

[Rumple]

You need ot make sure the physical switch is configured to do vlan tagging.

What kind of swithc do you have and how do you have it configured?

[krowczynski]

It looks like you have a configuration problem on you physical switch.

Are you doing it by yourself or have you got an seperate admin for doing this?

Also be sure thatyou port group has also the correct vlan marked!!

[bulletprooffool]

vSwitches operate in the same way as physical switches.

You will need to set up the Vlan tag on both the vSwitch and on the physical switch you arepatched into.

In addition, you will need to set up etherchannel trunks on the physical switch, if you are patching multiple nics on each vSwitch.

vSwitches tagged for vLan 4095 will process traffic to all VLANS so try setting your port group to use 4095 to start.

Verify connectivity, then work back from there,

[jcorbin121]

Its a Cisco 2960G

here is the port config

interface GigabitEthernet0/22

description EIPPESX1

switchport trunk allowed vlan 1-500

switchport mode trunk

switchport nonegotiate

no cdp enable

spanning-tree portfast trunk

Not sure how I can test outside of VSphere?

[jcorbin121]

The port group has VLAN 1-4094 - is that wrong?

[jsmithL1]

Set the portgroup for the vlan that the servers are on rather than 1-500 and it will work. The way you have it setup the connections to the VMs are trunks so unless you have software on the VMs to handle, they will not communicate.

[jcorbin121]

What I want to do is let VLAN tagging tell the traffic where to go - I have 8 active vlans and don't want to use 8 physical nic's - is that possible?

[jsmithL1 · Accepted solution]

Yes - create 8 portgroups and assign each one a single VLAN and then assign your VMs to the appropriate portgroup.

[beyondvm]

With your current setup, you would be doing the vlan tagging in the guest OS. What I imagine you are looking for is the equivalent of a vlan on ESX. What you should do is set up a different port group for each vlan and connect them all to the same virtual switch, this will cause the packets to be tagged as they come out of the virtual switch on to the trunk and accomplish your goal.

---

If you found any of my comments helpful please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

www.beyondvm.com

[jcorbin121]

Thanks very much - that works very nicely!!!

[stimko]

can I cont this thread, trying same setup:

Physical switch is setup for trunking to both hosts, but still can't ping through...

Trying to get the a virtual vmdmz portgroup to work on vlan 1483, with the below setup I can ping host localy on the physical VM network, but nothing across on the virtual vmdmz network.

esxi host A

Switch Name Num Ports Used Ports Configured Ports MTU Uplinks

vSwitch0 64 18 64 1500 vmnic1

PortGroup Name VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks

vmdmz 1483 6 vmnic1

VM Network 0 9 vmnic1

Management Network 0 1 vmnic1

esxi host B

Switch Name Num Ports Used Ports Configured Ports MTU Uplinks

vSwitch0 64 5 64 1500 vmnic0

PortGroup Name VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks

vmdmz 1483 1 vmnic0

VM Network 0 1 vmnic0

Management Network 0 1 vmnic0

[Rumple]

What native vlan did you get on the trunk?

It cannot be anything that will pass over the trunk.

[stimko]

it was the networking guy...

forgot to push the vlan configs down, it's working..

[Rumple]

Damn packet pushers....