UCS VLAN Port Count Limit

[K P SIM]

hi, Cisco:

Is there any way to INCREASE the VLAN Port Count Limit of 6000 Per FInterconnect running 1.4(2b)?

Imagine I have 4 vNIC and 10 selected VLAN Per Service Profile and 2 vHBA.

So in this case, how many VLAN ports will be used? Is it 60 or 40? Assuming it is 60, Does it man that I CAN ONLY HAVE 100 Service Profiles?

just wondering WHY is the VLAN Port Count Limit So Low? How about the other fabric and how DOES it contribute to the VLAN Port Count Limit?

Please advise.

Really appreciate it as we are rolling and rolling out UCS in droves.

SiM

[Robert Burns]

Hey KP,

The VLAN port count is accrued on an individual FI basis.  So each FI gets 6000 VLAN port counts.  This total is made up from a combination of Uplink ports (Border Interfaces) as well as virtual ports (Access Ports or HBAs).  You can see the current allocaiton by:

UCS-250-B# scope fabric-interconnect b

UCS-250-B /fabric-interconnect # show vlan-port-count

VLAN-Port Count:

    VLAN-Port Limit Access VLAN-Port Count Border VLAN-Port Count Alloc Status

    --------------- ---------------------- ---------------------- ------------

    6000            95                     114                    Available

UCS-250-B /fabric-interconnect #

The border (uplink) interfaces are pretty easy to understand.  The Access VLAN Port Count is incremented for each VLAN on each vNIC defined, as well as any HBAs. 

So in your example, if you have 4 vNICs with 10 VLANs defined on each, plus two HBAs you would have 4 x 10 + 2 = 42 VLAN port counts for this service profile. 

The only time this count comes into consideration is with an adaptor that can create multiple virtual ports such as the Palo (M81KR-VIC) adaptor.  We have many cloud providers with 20+ Chassis who never hit the max limit. 

This limitation brings in "good design" practices.  If you want to define 4 vNICs for your service profiles, do you really need all 10 VLANs allowed on each of the 4 vNICs?  Crafting an individual vNIC for different purposes such as VMotion, Management, iSCSI etc is a great idea.  But I don't need to allow each & every VLAN on these various purpose NICs.  Just allowing all VLANs on ALL  vNICs is the only way you'll likely exceed the 6000 VLAN port count limit.  This again, would probably identify a design concern more than system limitation.

Let me know if you have any other questions/concerns.

Regards,

Robert

[K P SIM]

Robert:

I FULLY understand and agree with your suggestions. The latest update is our customer ONLY created 2 vNIC within the UCS Service Profiles, so they have lumped every known VLAN into these 2 vNIC. So I think I have to tell them to create more vNIC within UCS and selectively assign the relevant VLAN(s) to the relevant vNIC too.

Am I making any sense here?

Really appreciate your excellent response. Another great Cisco techie.

SiM

[Robert Burns · Accepted solution]

Yep makes sense.  The rule of thumb into resource access is only allow what you need, not just what's avaiable .

Cheers,

Robert

[odahlqvist]

Hi Robert

Has this numbers chnaged up to 32000 in ver 2.2.(x)

VLAN-Port Count:
    VLAN-Port Limit Access VLAN-Port Count Border VLAN-Port Count Alloc Status
    --------------- ---------------------- ---------------------- ------------
    32000           30209                  1736                   Available

in our case we have 1736 vlan which is over the limit of 982 and then we have 2 vNics with 1736 vlan and 2 HBA =3474 number of Server profile is 3 before he started to protest on the vlan port limit exeded , so this would be 3*(2-vNICS*1736+2HBA=3474*3 server profile=10422 which don´t match up to 30209 ?? how should we count regarding The Access VLAN Port Count ?