VLANs for VMs

[ElQueue]

I'm trying to plan for a server that will be running 4 VMs. While I was contemplating the way I would have it work, I realized I needed each VM to be on a different VLAN. From what I understand, I could set up the port it's attached to on the switch to be a trunk to supply only the 4 VLANs I need, but how do I force each of the VMs to use a specific VLAN? Is the only way to have multiple Ethernet interfaces connected to multiple access ports, or is there a way to use it over said trunk with 1 interface?

It will be connected to a Catalyst 3750 stacked 3 tall if it matters. I don't have a specific VM/Hypervisor in mind yet, so I'm flexible if there's solutions that require a specific one.

[Seb Rupik]

Hi there,

You hypervisor will have a construct called a vSwitch. This is connected to one or more physical interfaces on the server. The vSwitch itself will then have 'Port Groups' which are each assigned a VLAN ID. You VMs will then connect their virtual interfaces into the required Port Group giving you the required VLAN segregation. The vSwitch will handle the VLAN tags required for this operation.

Of course you can also assign a single VLAN to a physical interface by having a separate vSwitch with a single Port Group and a dedicated physical adapter.

I should point out the above terms are from vmware, but the concepts should be the same across most architectures.

https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf

cheers,

Seb.