Part 24 -Adding VLANs to Cisco UCS Manager with VLAN Groups

A server managed by UCS Manager can only use a VLAN if that VLAN exists in UCSM, is allowed on the server’s vNICs, and is allowed on the fabric interconnect uplinks. The cleanest way to handle all three is with VLAN groups. You set them up once, and after that, adding a VLAN means adding it to the right group.

Reserved VLAN IDs

You can’t create every ID from 1–4094 in UCS. Fabric interconnects reserve some ranges for internal use:

3915–4042: reserved by the FI’s NX-OS by default. On 6400/6500-series FIs this 128-VLAN block can be moved (LAN → LAN Cloud → Global Policies → Reserved VLAN Start ID), but the change needs a reload of both FIs.
4043–4047 and 4094–4095: always reserved.

One-time setup – Create the VLAN groups

LAN → LAN Cloud → VLAN Groups → Create VLAN Group

Name the group, for example esx-mgmt

Choose the uplink ports

Uplink Ports / Port Channels: if different VLANs go to different upstream switches (disjoint L2), pin the group to the uplinks or port channels

Choose the port channel and click finish

The VLAN Group ESX-Mgmt is created

To add a new VLAN to our ESX Mgmt VLAN Group > Select the VLAN Group – Click Add and choose Create VLAN

Give the VLAN a name and choose VLAN ID as 1611 for example and check for overlap to see if that vlan is created elsewhere in the fabric

Click OK

We need to now highlight the VLAN we just created and click OK

Now our new VLAN is added into our VLAN Group

Add to the vNIC template

LAN → Policies → root → vNIC Templates → template → General → Modify VLAN Groups and all VLAN we just created. Add the group to both the Fabric A and Fabric B templates.