Switch port configuration for virtualization

[notoftheearth]

I have a switch which will connect to a physical server used in virtualization.  This means that virtual machines with IP addresses on multiple subnets will be sending layer 2 frames to this switch.  However, in attempting to minimize the number of NICs on this server there is a question.   If there were only one NIC in this physical server connected to one port on the physical switch - is it possible to have one port on the physical switch handle frames which originate from all VMs running on the physical server - when these VMs have IPs on different subnets?  Or does each separate logical subnet require a separate switch port to handle its frames and a separate physical NIC on the server used for virtualization?

Thanks for your input

[Bert Gevers · Accepted solution]

Hi,

with recent devices, you should be able to configure one physical link between the switch and the server as a trunk.

Trunking is a way to carry traffic from several VLANs over a       point-to-point link between the two devices.

You can then map each virtual machine/separate subnet to a different vlan on the trunk keeping the traffic logically separated.

HTH,

Bert