asked on

Creating vlans in a VMware Home Lab

Excuse my lack of networking knowledge. I'm learning as I go. A lot of our clients have a small one or two host vSphere environment with 15 or fewer VMs. I recently built a one host ESXi 6.7 lab to mirror what most of our clients have as a learning tool for me. My host has 5 network ports. I have a Surfboard modem that connects to my Netgear N600 router. That router connects to my layer 3 Cisco Catalyst 3550 switch. From the 3550 switch, is where I have all my lab equipment connected (Host and Synology storage). I created vlans on the 3550 but I have not assigned them to any ports.

My question is where do I create the new subnets for the vlans? I want my servers to stay on the 192.168.1.x network which is coming from the Netgear.
I would like separate the subnets for servers, storage and vmotion so I can create the virtual switches in vCenter. I would like to do this so I can have a better understanding on how to setup virtual switches in a production environment.

Thank you

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

Firstly vLANS are created on the hosts (networking) using vCenter Server as a management tool.

Your VLANS need to be created on

1. virtual machine portgroups on the ESXi hosts.
2. VMKernel Portgroups for Storage and vMotion.
3. The VLANS will need to be created on the 3550 (which hosts and storage connect to).
4. You will also need those VLANS on the Netgear N600 router if you want them to access internet. But you do not need storage and vmotion VLANS on the Netgear N600 router

Shane

ASKER

Makes sense but unfortunately I don't believe my Netgear N600 has vlan support.

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

You may not need to carry VLAN traffic all the way to your N600.

You would have to be creative with the connected ports.

Pete Long

Hi

from memory, I think the 3550 supports static layer 3 routing so you are in luck!

what I would do (and what I do in my VMware test lab)

Is created a routed port on my switch, that's on the same network as my router, here's mine....

!
interface GigabitEthernet1/0/24
description ~Uplilnk to ASA 5520 Gi0/1 (inside)
no switchport
ip address 192.168.254.1 255.255.255.0
!

Then on the switch create a static route to route all traffic to the router

!
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.254.254
!

So now your switch can become the 'router/default gateway' for all you VLANS :)

For each VLAN create an SVI (VLAN IP)

!
interface Vlan100
ip address 192.168.100.1 255.255.255.0
!
interface Vlan101
ip address 192.168.101.1 255.255.255.0
!

etc

then how you connect them to ESXI depends, I usually make vMotion and iSCSI/NFS ports access ports like this....

!
interface GigabitEthernet1/0/19
description Connected to ESX-02 (HP Server) vNIC5 ISCSI
switchport access vlan 300
switchport mode access
!

(If the switch port is an access ports DON'T define a VLAN in VMware (e.g. in the port group.)

Now if you are carrying multiple VLANS into a VMware switch you need the uplink to be a trunk.

!
interface GigabitEthernet1/0/11
description Uplink to ESX-02 vmnic3
switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport mode trunk
!

Then on the switch create a PORT GROUP for each VLAN and 'tag' it to the correct VLAN number.

I did a write up on this a while ago;
Cisco Catalyst – Configure Ports for VMware ESXi NICs using VLANS

Regards,

Pete

Shane

ASKER

I will give that a shot. Unfortunately it'll have to wait a week. I'll keep you posted. Thanks!

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