Management interfaces on Cisco switches and its VLANs

[ADAman]

hello. I am new to Cisco switches, but I have read a lot about them. I am using a Catalyst 7600.

I set up a VLAN interface (VLAN 3) with an IP-address and I can connect to it using telnet and log in to the switch as admin.I call this my management interface.

How come I manage to log into the management interface when the native VLAN is default 1? I thought the native VLAN determines which VLAN I need to log into to access the switch?

Can I make management interfaces of all the 48 ports if I want?

[cadet alain]

Hi,

the native vlan is a dot1q concept and it has nothing to do with the administration of the device.

It just happens that the default vlan  is vlan 1 which is also the native vlan but you can decide to change the native vlan and

also choose which vlan will be used to administer the device.

Regards.

Alain.

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[ADAman]

Ok, so I can only set 1 VLAN IP address to administer the switch normally? I thought I could set as many VLAN IP-interfaces as I wanted? One for port 1, one for port 2, one for port 3. Or is it a limitation of 1 or two normally?

[cadet alain · Accepted solution]

Hi,

on L3 switches you can indeed configure multiple SVIs and as long as you have IP connectivity you can use any to connect to the switch but it is better to only have one dedicated management vlan.

Regards.

Alain.

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[Alessio Andreoli]

yes,

you can set the vlan you want on all the switch ports you have available. best practices do not allow the vlan 1 to remain active or forwarding some production environment data..

mind about the native vlan only when you crate trunks. quite practical suggestion

Alessio

[ADAman]

Finally, what about the mgmt-interface I configure during setup. If we can set IP management interfaces on all VLANs later, what is the purpose of the mgmt0-interface? And does it still work? Do I connect to it on VLAN 1 to the IP I set during setup? Can I run setup again and change it? what is the command to run setup again on a Catalyst switch?