Work with VLANS or without VLANS on ESXi ?

[Zurattos]

Hello, 

 

I want to ask what is the best for the ESXI to work with VLANS or without VLANS ? 

 

I mean by this question I have some machines which I Can simply create a new virtual switches for them and for each virtual switch I will assign a port group without a VLAN , or create only one virtual switch with multiple port groups then assign multiple VLANS ?

 

I mean multiple VLANS is affecting the load of the VMware ? like CPU and processing or it's better to work without VLANS ? just a new virtual switch even without physical connections then assign port groups without VLANS to it ? 

Thanks in advance.

Best Regards,

[a_p_]

It's basically a network design consideration for the whole network (physical and virtual).

If you are dealing with multiple VLANs that are required for the VMs, and all of these VLANs are present on your physical switches, then there's no reason not to do the VLAN tagging in vSphere. If the load balancing option in the vSwitches don't meet your requirements, you can still map port groups to dedicated vmnics.

A reason to create individual virtual switches is, if you need to connect vmnics to dedicated physical switches, e.g. a physically separated DMZ. Another example could be an iSCSI storage connection across multiple paths, if the storage vendor requests it.

Using VLANs makes life much easier. Consider implementing a new VLAN. With VLAN tagging, you simply need to allow that VLAN in the physical switches, and create a new port group on the ESXi hosts. No need to add physical network adapters, connect network cables etc.

André

[Sachchidanand Upadhyay]

Multiple virtual switch for specific set of VMs without physical connection will serve the local connectivity only, means VMs within a ESXi can communicate to each other but not to other segments in your network. It's better to create one Virtual Switch with multiple port group having a trunk uplink connection if you want to segregate your VMs to multiple networks.

If you want to communicate to other network outside your ESXi then creating multiple switchs requires multiple uplink physical connectivity. 

Rest depends on your network architecture how you want to design it.

Regards,

Sachchidanand