Virtual Servers and switch port config

[katerina.dardoufa]

Hello,

I have always had the following question. VMWare Servers are gradually connected to our environment. Their uplink is on cisco switches and the connection is configured as trunk. Should the port have spanning-tree portfast enabled or not, because it is actually connected to a virtual switch?

An explanation or maybe some material for further reading would be highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Katerina

[jonathanaxford]

Hi there,

As far as I am aware, the Spanning Tree Protocol is not implemented in vSwitch on ESX 3.5 for certain, so you can safely enable Spanning-tree portfast as no STP BPDUs should ever originate from the ESX host connected to that link.

I am pretty sure also that there is no way to create a loop between vSwitches on ESX, so STP is not required. This is all concerncing ESX3.5 - we are sono to be moving to VSphere, so there may well be some changes there but i am not aware of any  at the mo...

Hope this helps,

Jonathan

[jonathanaxford · Accepted solution]

Just found the following on Google:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=F_8qs4lPLpwC&pg=PA143&lpg=PA143&dq=VMware+vswitch+support+STP&source=bl&ots=GmvFQUxRuu&sig=IPWSllSkW2SqvE7nrufEMJ86jBg&hl=en&ei=-0q0TOy4A8fw4gbyktygDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDIQ6AEwBA#v=onepage...

Seems to confirm that STP is not implemented on latest VMware ESX.

Many thanks

Jonathan

[katerina.dardoufa]

Hello Jonathan!

Thank you very much for the info. It really clears things up for me