2910al Switch help with vlan setup for vsphere setup

[scottyp]

HELP !!!!

I am currently setting up Vsphere for my work.

i have been given two 2901 L3 switches to run this off in a redundant config.

i have never setup a switch for Vlans before and need help if you dont mind.

im not sure of how many vlans i need so any help would be appreciated. my isp who manage our links have given me a subnet to run the iscsi off and this gets forwarded to one of the switches. i need this subnet available to the rest of the business for support.

hope this makes sence ???

[Mohammed Faiz]

Hi,

It might be easier if you explained your current topology in a bit more detail (a quick diagram's always good :) )
You mentioned your ISP has assigned you a subnet, does that mean your switches are on different sites with your VMs split across those sites?
What is currently doing the routing on your network?
The number of VLANs you need depends on what you're running at the moment, it's common to run your iSCSI traffic on a seperate VLAN.
Do you have a seperate subnet for your servers and clients?

[scottyp]

Hi there

i have attached a quick pdf.

untill now i have had no need for vlans, all the core servers have been located on the 118 network along with the CCTV.

switch 1 & 2 have been added along with the esx and san. as the core switch is not L3 my isp who manage our routing set the 10.174.233 to route through to switch 1.

Hope this helps

S

[Mohammed Faiz]

Ok, so there's already some config on your HP2910's?
If you just want to setup VLANs for those networks listed do the following.

On both 2910's create the VLANs you want:

HP2910# vlan 10 name iSCSI
HP2910# vlan 20 name VMotion
HP2910# vlan 30 name DMZ

On the port(s) that link the two 2910's together (e.g. port 24) tag each of these VLANs

HP2910_1# vlan 10 tag 24
HP2910_2# vlan 10 tag 24

If you want switch 1 to be able to route traffic to your iSCSI VLAN give it an IP address on that VLAN (I'm assuming routing is already enabled on it).

HP2910_1# vlan 10 ip address 10.174.233.1/24

How you present these networks to VMWare depends upon the physical networking you have for your VMWare hosts.
If you have multiple indiviual links for each network you can untag the VLANs to each port, e.g. if port 1 is an iSCSI only port

HP2910_1# vlan 10 untag 1

If you have a single interface handling multiple networks you'd tag all the VLANs on that port, e.g.

HP2910_1# vlan 10 tag 2
HP2910_1# vlan 20 tag 2
HP2910_1# vlan 30 tag 2

There's a lot of variables there depending upon your exact setup and that doesn't even cover trunking links to VMWare or multiple links between servers and the two 2910's.

hth

[scottyp]

Many thanks for your comments, i will try that now.

do you have any recomendations on what else i can do wioth this setup regarding trunk and links..

[Jay671]

Great explanation Mohammed Faiz. Documentation on switch setup and VMware, iscsi SAN and the likes has been very limited.
You wouldn't happen to have further documentation, or examples, possible drawings of layouts would you?
Everything so far has been trial and error, but your explanation was spot on and easy to understand.

Thanks!

[Mohammed Faiz]

Hi Jay,

I'm afraid there's not much detail that I have documented on the network side.
I've attached an example of the type of diagrams I keep to hand for our smaller VMWare cluster but as you can see the connectivity on the network side is really quite simple.
The complexity with regards to VMWare networking is all on the Virtual Connect/Flex10/VMWare virtual switch side (which I don't manage :) )
As long as your LACP trunks are setup correctly (if you're using trunks) and your VLAN ID tags on your switches and virtual switches match you shouldn't have any problems.

[Jay671]

Thanks for the diagram Mohammed. I to am not in charge of the VM side which I think is where a lot of my problems have risen from.

Interesting though that you mention the use of LACP. Currently I am using "Trunk". In my first setup using two 2910's I was using LACP, until I came across this article,

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2008/09/05/vmware-esx-nic-teaming-and-vlan-trunking-with-hp-procurve/

where the author says not to use LACP as the VM NIC's don't support it. In my current configuration (two 5400 12 slot) I changed the trunk over to "Trunk".
I didn't see any difference but thought it best based on that article. I also contacted the author and asked if it was still relevant to the latest updates to VMware and he said from the best that he could tell, VM still did not support the LACP function, and that you may not see much on the surface as far as performance depending on your scale but could see significant problems deeper down.

Not sure how relevant it is in your configuration, but a good read none the less.

More on the Cisco side, but also very good reads from the same author.

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2006/12/04/esx-server-nic-teaming-and-vlan-trunking/

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2008/07/16/understanding-nic-utilization-in-vmware-esx/

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2008/09/05/setting-vmware-esx-vswitch-load-balancing-policy-via-cli/

-Jay

[Mohammed Faiz]

I must admit that diagram's a bit old (it was just the first one that came to hand!) and we're not using any VMWare clusters that aren't on blade chassis' at the moment.
And as such the network connectivity is all provided via either virtual connect or flex10 modules which do support LACP trunking.