e0M VLAN ports

[NetApp93]

Good Afternoon,

I realized today that my management LIFs/ports are residing in the same VLAN as my Data LIFs/ports. My use case isn't ideal - unfortunately I only have one switch to use for my Data network and my Management Network (cluster network is internal to the system, only two node AFF-A150). My initial desire was to create a VLAN on the switch/NetApp in order to at least segregate the management/data traffic if I am forced to use the same switch, however I have read some documentation saying that "e0M ports are not compatible with VLANs".

I am looking for some clarification regarding e0M ports and the corresponding switch interfaces that they connect to. I found one KB article  that somewhat goes into this although I am looking for "best practice" on how to configure the switch interface that e0M is facing. Looking on my existing systems, these ports are all configured as "switchport access vlan X" however are lacking "switchport mode access" and do not have "switchport mode trunk" configured either. My networking knowledge is limited, but to my knowledge the interface would need that "switchport mode access" in order to be "turned on" as an access port, so I'm not sure there is any VLAN frames even being sent across those connections currently. Additionally I don't have any e0M-X ports created that my management LIFs would sit on either.

To make a long story short, is there any best practice switch configuration that is recommended for connecting to e0M ports?

[cedric_renauld]

Hello,

VLAN tag are not supported or best practice, the better wat is to set your switch port as untaged or with a untaged by befault if is trunked

see this article : https://kb.netapp.com/on-prem/ontap/da/NAS/NAS-KBs/e0M_Service_Processor_or_BMC_unreachable_on_network_due_to_VLAN_tagging_on_switch_port

• As VLAN tagging can not be applied to the e0M/SP/BMC interfaces, a change should be made on the switch port the e0M/SP/BMC is connected to
• On the affected switch port, add the correct VLAN as the native VLAN if using a trunk port, or the default VLAN if utilizing an access port
  • Please refer to your switch vendor's documentation to make the necessary change
• As the e0M/SP/BMC can only support a single untagged VLAN, making the affected switch port an access port is recommended, however not required

[NetApp93]

Hi Cedric,

Yes, that article is the one I linked above however the wording is somewhat confusing. It recommends doing either:

1. Configuring the switchport as trunked, and making the "correct" VLAN the native VLAN. When it says "correct" does it just mean a designated management VLAN that my network is using? If so, wouldn't that be ill advised, seeing as you never want to have your native VLAN as a VLAN you are actually using?
2. "Change it to an access switchport for VLAN 1" wouldn't that then require your switch to be L3, or at least be connected to a router for inter-vlan routing?