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Paul WagnerFlag for United States of America

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Which VLAN to include ESXi hosts

We are designing a new network model and I want to ensure that my network is modeled after best practices.

vlan 5 - network devices

vlan 10 - servers (VMs)

Which vlan should I be putting my esxi hosts into? Please provide a reference. I've looked for documentation that talks about this and can't find anything.
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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If it's being managed by vCenter Server, which VLAN would this server be in?

VLAN 10 ?

So put the hosts in a Different Management VLAN - 1!
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vCenter will be in vlan10 with the other servers.
Is the vCenter server supposed to be in a different VLAN than the hosts?
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Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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Understood. Do you know where I can find documentation on this? I haven't been able to find anything in KB VMware.
As far as I know I've not seen any documentation on this, because it's common sense!

Both Host and Management server would need to be reachable on the network, and communicate between them should be ok.

If you want to read more on networking in VMware ESX/ESXi, then I recommend the following:-

I would also recommend reading through the Networking Sections of the following guides to gain a better understanding of Networking in VMware ESX/ESXi.

Pages 13 - 73 Discuss Networking in Detail, including trunks, VLANs, switches, and load balancing

ESXi Configuration Guide ESXi 4.1

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r41/vsp_41_esxi_server_config.pdf

Virtual Networking

http://www.vmware.com/technical-resources/virtual-networking/virtual-networks.html

Virtual Networking Concepts

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf
@Andrew Hancock

Just wanted to ask a follow up question- Is it ok to include my tertiary (end-user) switches in the same VLAN as vCenter and the hosts or do they need to be separate. We're talking about an infrastructure of less than 300 users.
You can include them in the same VLAN or seperate.

It depends on how many IP Addresses, and subnet you have available for your servers.
I'll have enough IP's in the range. Just didn't know if it was a best practice to separate them. I'd rather keep them together for simplicity, unless of course there was some conflict or design reason not to.

Thanks!