VLANs and ESXi, is there a specific order of creation?

I'm maybe being overly cautious, but I need to ask a few questions that hopefully someone can answer.

I have an all-in-one napp-it setup on ESXi, with the 2 NICs teamed to a VLAN capable switch.

I would like to seggregate and build some VLANs: internal/private VLAN, management VLAN and a VLAN for a security camera.

Is there any way I can lock myself out of esxi or my switch if I create VLANs / tagging in the wrong order? specifically the management network has me a bit worried. I can assign a VLAN ID in esxi console. I assume I need to include my teamed-port "trunk", and any ports that I need to access the MGMT network from, like my router and my PC.

Any words of wisdom?

 

Order of VLAN creation will not impact operation. Once you have your trunk port(s) configured and ESXi accessible, the process is as follows:

• SWITCH: Create a VLAN on the switch
• SWITCH: Tag the trunk with the new VLAN ID(s)
• ESXi: Create a port group on the virtual switch to which the trunk is attached.

You can only assign a physical NIC to a single vSwitch (although you can assign multiple NICs to single vSwitch); with your setup consisting of 2 NICs teamed chances are you only have one vSwitch. In your case, there will be a port-group on vSwitch0 (default) for the management network, so you will be adding port groups to vSwitch0 for your other VLANs, and assigning your host VMs to the appropriate port-group once you have gotten things configured.

If for some reason you hose things up, you can always reset the network configuration from the ESXi console, via either IPMI or good ole MKbM.

 

Thanks.

There are 2 vSwitches, though only one is connected with the teamed NICs. The other is purely virtual to allow the VMs to access the ZFS storage through NFS.