Esx 5.1 vlans procurve

[Kernemn]

Hello im new with vmware.
Well i have 2 esx 5.1 server with 4 nics.one procurve 2810.
I havent understood so good the vlans.for example if i want 5 vlans iselect in procurve which ports i want to use,that means that i have different thinclients in these ports for different purpose.they dont see each other?is that right?
When i i create one vswitch with all the 4 nics and i want 5 vlans what should i do in procurve?when these 4 nics are connected in procurve then i select which ports in procurve will be member of these vlans?for example 2 ports per vlan.
I dont understand also when should be tagged or untagged.
Sorry for this so easy question but im new!
Thanks in advance

[Matcol]

VLAN tagging is done so that on a link that is carrying multiple virtual LANs, you have ID on each frame telling the switches which VLAN that frame belongs to.

Therefore, VLAN tagging is useful on links that are carrying multiple VLANs. If your link has just one VLAN, then you can leave it untagged.

If you have it untagged at one end of a link, the other end needs to also be untagged. Ditto with tagged.

[HEKnet]

Hi,

actually your question is not really HP-related because the same question can be posed for every switch.

If you do not know what VLANs are, you should read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.1Q. The HP manual "Advanced Traffic Management Guide" has a very nice introduction, too. The pictures (especially the picture "Example of Tagged and Untagged VLAN in the same Network") should clarify, when to use tagged and/or untagged VLANs. That is too much to be repeated here. If you still have questions after reading this, then ask again a specific question about a specific statement in the manual.

May I ask, why you want to use VLANs, if you do not really know what they are for? If I understood correctly you have five virtual servers and you want five VLANs. This coincidence of numbers makes me assume, you believe to need one VLAN per virtual server. Although both terms have "virtual" on their names, this is not a rule. That is a rather strange setup.

The rest of your question is rather vmWare related but anyway I would do the following.

Step 1) Create a virtual switch vSwitch on your VM host

Step 2) Connect all four physical NICs of your VM host to the vSwitch and put them into a trunk

Step 3) Connect all fourn physical NICs to the HP switch and create a trunk, too

Of course, the trunking mechanism must be the same on the HP switch and the vSwitch (for example: non-protocol trunking or  LACP). This way you get increased bandwith and fail-over security.

Step 4) On the HP switch assign all VLANs you want to support on the trunk as tagged.

You have two options how to proceed on the VM Host.

Option 1 (My preferred option)

Step 5) On the vSwitch create one "network" for each VLAN with the correct VLAN ID.

Side remark: Actually the term "network" as used by vSphere is not a really good choice. The better term would be "sub-switch". Because a vSwitch does not have physical ports that could be configured, you configure "networks" instead. Each time you "plug" a VM guest into the vSwitch a virtual port is created on the vSwitch that inherits the settings of the "network".

Step 6) Add one virtual NIC to every VM guest for each VLAN the guest system is supposed to be connected to. Then attach each of the virtual NICs to the correct "network" you configured in step 5).

For example: If you want guest #1 to receive traffic from VLAN 42, create a virtual NIC in the guest machine and connect this to the network with VLANID 42 on the vSwitch.

If you want guest #2 to be member of VLAN 08 and VLAN 15, create two NICs in the guest machine and connect one NIC to the network 08 and one NIC to the network 42.

Personal remark: I prefer this option, because one does not need to support 802.1Q on the guest OS. The guest has one virtual NIC per VLAN and needs to deal with untagged traffic only.

Option 2

Step 5) Create one big network on the vSwitch that accepts all 802.1Q traffic.

Step 6) Add one single virtual NIC to each guest system and connect this one to the network from step 5)

Step 7) Configure the guest OS of each virtual machine such that it supports 802.1Q on its single virtual NIC.

Matthias