MXL and Vmware dvS PVLAN

From: Jayson_Block [mailto:bounce-Jayson_Block@kmp.dell.com]
Sent: venerdì 12 dicembre 2014 21:26
To: Cloud_Virtualization@kmp.dell.com
Subject: RE: MXL and Vmware dvS PVLAN

Dell Customer Communication

The feature you are actually looking for, to support VMware and PVLAN together, is PVLAN trunking. I get into why here in just a second.

FTOS does indeed support this feature in the majority of the 10/40 lineup, which is actually a pretty significant thing as many other vendors (like Brocade Ethernet for example) do not support or are just now introducing support for PVLAN trunking today. Almost all vendors now support an implementation of PVLAN, that’s not at issue; VMware specifically requires PVLAN trunking and those trunks must support the ability to tag both normal VLAN IDs as well as PVLAN IDs.

Here is a link to the MXL FTOS 9.6.0.0 CLI reference guide – beware, it’s pretty big.

http://www.force10networks.com/CSPortal20/KnowledgeBase/DOCUMENTATION/CLIConfig/FTOS/MXL_9.6.0.0_CLI_Sept_23_2014.pdf

Details start at page 41.

We’re all used to presenting trunks to ESX hosts and these trunk switchports are configured to support multiple VLAN IDs which have been set to ‘tagged’ on those particular ports or port-channels. Private VLAN for VMware is handled the same way. You can configure those same trunks to support private-VLAN trunking and then tag both the primary PVLAN and the secondary (isolated, community, etc) PVLAN IDs onto those trunks.

In the dvS top-level  when you configure Private VLAN it will ask for both the primary VLAN ID as well as the attached secondary IDs. Once configured at the top-level you can then create port groups for the primary (if desired) and secondary PVLAN IDs as necessary.

At the physical switch level you create VLAN IDs as normal but then go into each VLAN interface you want to be a PVLAN and start defining their modes.

Below is purely an example:

All 32 of the internal switchports.

- int range tengigabitethernet 0/0-31

- description ESXi-host-trunk-ports

- switchport

- portmode hybrid

- mtu 12000

- flowcontrol rx on tx off

- switchport mode private-vlan trunk

- int vlan 10

- description Just-a-regular-vlan

- mtu 12000

- tagged TenGigabitEthernet 0/0-31

- int vlan 450

- description PVLAN-primary

- mtu 12000

- private-vlan mode primary

- private-vlan mapping secondary-vlan 451

- tagged TenGigabitEthernet 0/0-31

- int vlan 451

- description PVLAN-secondary-isolated

- mtu 12000

- private-vlan mode isolated

- tagged TenGigabitEthernet 0/0-31

Note that vlan 10 above is still tagged on 0/0-15 in addition to the PVLAN primary and secondary VLANs, though the addition of the line ‘switchport mode private-vlan trunk’ is what enables this feature; the ability to tag PVLAN IDs on a trunk.

Hope this helps!

--

Jayson Block

Senior Technical Design Architect

Dell | Datacenter, Cloud and Converged Infrastructure – C&SI

+1 443-876-3366 cell – Maryland – USA

From: Matteo_Mazzari [mailto:bounce-Matteo_Mazzari@kmp.dell.com]
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2014 1:27 PM
To: Cloud_Virtualization@kmp.dell.com
Subject: MXL and Vmware dvS PVLAN

Hi all,

Are there any guideline to configure FTOS and ESXi to use PVLAN? Experience? Suggestion?

Thanks a lot

Kind regards

Matteo Mazzari

Solution Architect

Dell | Global Storage Services

mobile +39 340 9312022