Need Help with Networking

[sck1025]

We are just bringing up our infrastructure and I have few networking questions.

1. We have 3 VLANs we need machines to reside in. (Internal, DMZ, and Secure) Each VLAN is on it's own network segment but same physical switch. Do I need to create 3 vswitches one for each VLAN?

2. Do i only need 1 vswitch for my VM's but 3 different port groups?

I am very new at this so I apologize in advance if this seems elementary to some...

[Jasemccarty]

1 vSwitch

3 Portgroup

Just make sure the switch port your ESXi is connected to is trunked.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

[sck1025]

Thats what i thought, however our network group does not allow port trunking. They are concerned about getting into a spanning tree loop and bringing the whole cisco switch down.

[sck1025]

Each host has 12 NICS, is it possible to assign 1 nic to a particular VLAN, so essentially we would have 1pNIC for DMZ, 1 pNIC for Internal and 1 pNIC for secure? Is this configuration recommended or even allowable?

[Jasemccarty]

If they are scared about trunking a port, have them take a look at this document:

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

[Jasemccarty]

You could assign 3 or 4 different pNics to different vlans at the switch level, and you would be fine.

For better redundancy, why not have 6 or 8 connected (3 or 4 to 1 switch, and 3 or 4 to another switch)?

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

[sck1025]

Would we still only need one vSwitch if we decided to go with the6 to 8 pNICS? Or would we need to create 3 different vSwitches? Sorry for all the questions...just want to make sure i am understanding completely.

[Jasemccarty]

To segment to the physical nics, you would have to have separate vSwitches.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

[TiagoAviz]

How would the port member of a trunk would get in a Layer 2 loop?

Enable STP on each port if they are scared about it..

I guess that since you can't change tha port into a trunk, you would have to use three pNIC's, each on its own vswitch, since the VLAN's would all work untagged..