cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
cancel
692
Views
0
Helpful
2
Replies

Vlans with ESX 3.5 and Cat6509

dmooreami
Level 3
Level 3

have Esx 3.5 with 6 physical NICs. It connects to my Cat6509 running 12.x IOS code. Have downloaded the Vmware/cisco whitepaper and several vmKB articles. Still have some confusion here.

1) Plan to run ESX in VST (vlan Tagging) mode.

2) What is the deal with Native Vlan ID in Esx VST can't be the same as the native VlanID of the physical switch? Huh? Is this a fancy way of saying change the native Vlan from 1 to "anything" when handing off trunks to ESX?

The vmkb articls 1004048 which outline etherchannel, but doesn't specify changing the native vlan to something else.

Is it possible to etherchannel and trunk over the same nics with ESX?

2 Replies 2

thomas.chen
Level 6
Level 6

In ESX Virtual Switch Tagging (VST Mode) mode, you provision one port group on a virtual switch for each VLAN, and then attach the virtual machine's virtual adapter to the port group instead of the virtual switch directly. The virtual switch port group tags all outbound frames and removes tags for all inbound frames. It also ensures that frames on one VLAN do not leak into a different VLAN.

Native VLAN ID on ESX VST Mode is not supported. Do not assign a VLAN to a port group that is same as the native VLAN ID of the physical switch. Native VLAN packets are not tagged with VLAN ID on the out going traffic toward ESX host. Therefore, if ESX is set VST mode, it drops the packets that are lacking a VLAN tag.

Thanks. Did it the old fashioned way, trial and error and google. :)

Since we don't run any ip data ver Vlan1 (used only for vtp), having the native vlan1 not carry any traffic wasn't a problem.

My VMware guy got all the vm settings correct. I created a port channel group of 4 gig trunked connections to vmware and Vm took the trunk and ran with it.

All works good.

Getting Started

Find answers to your questions by entering keywords or phrases in the Search bar above. New here? Use these resources to familiarize yourself with the community: