How many Port-Groups can be added to a vSwitch? The Physical port of the server and the physical port it connects to in the switch they both need to be trunk…Correct? As long as you have the port-groups (multiple VLANs) configured on the vSwitch your Virtual Machine is connected to, the multiple vlans will flow across. Correct?
Hello Irvin
You can add as many port groups as needed to a vSwitch, as long as the vSphere environment resources (CPU, memory, and storage) are not exhausted, and the underlying vSwitch has adequate uplink capacity. There’s no strict limit on the number of port groups from a vSphere perspective, but practicality and manageability considerations apply.
Yes, correct. For multiple VLANs to flow through the connection, the physical NIC of the ESXi host connects to the physical network switch. The port on the physical switch must be configured as a trunk port to allow tagged traffic for multiple VLANs. The vSwitch port group assigns the VLAN tags to the virtual NICs of the VMs.
Yes, the multiple VLANs will flow across the network, but certain conditions must be met:
- First, each port group on the vSwitch must be configured with the appropriate VLAN ID that corresponds to the VLAN configuration on the physical network.
- Second, the physical switch port connected to the ESXi host must be configured as a trunk port and allow the VLANs that are assigned to the vSwitch port groups.
- Lastly, the vSwitch is responsible for VLAN tagging based on the VLAN ID specified for each port group, so it is essential to ensure that the tagging configuration on the vSwitch matches the VLAN setup on the physical switch.
I hope this has been helpful!
Laz