Thursday, August 12, 2021

Cisco > ESX Host Trunk Settings (VTP, PortFast, etc)

I'm preparing for some network switch upgrades at work and stumbled across a few questions regarding ESX host connections to a switch.

  • Should PortFast be enabled on the ESX trunk port?
    • Consensus seems to be yes
  • How about BPDUguard / BPDUfilter?
    • This seems personal preference based on probability of a VM sending BPDUs. We have some random appliances from Avaya for example, so I'm not sure I would trust BPDU Guard.
  • VLAN tagging / VTP v3
    • How does an ESX host respond to VTP pruning?
    • Depending on how pruning is handled, and since VTP allows all VLANs on a trunk link by default, should VTP be disabled entirely on that trunk port?
      • This seems ideal from a security and ESX host performance standpoint - why make the ESX host process all that broadcast traffic?
      • Only concern would be forgetting the switchport trunk allowed vlan ADD keyword and nuking a host.

Appreciate any input. I never really considered the possibility of PortFast on a trunk port before and we don't currently rock Cisco gear so not the simplest setup to test in a lab (can't even get pruning to work with vIOS in EVE).



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