ESX trunking Server Side

In continuation of my last post:VMware ESX VLAN trunking I had a issue on one of the server where service console was not on a separate NIC and hence after trunking I couldn't get to it remotely via Virtual Center or ssh.
So basically, I had to use command line utilities on local console to get the service console back on network before I could create port groups for different vlans and attach my virtual servers to these. Here is how I went about doing this:
Login to ESX server as root and issue the following command:
esxcfg-vswitch -l
This command is mostly under /usr/sbin and Gives me list of currently configured port groups, their Now lets assume that service console port is under vlan 25 for vswitch0, so we would need to create a port group for that vlan and lets call it "SCVlan25", could be anything you want to call it.
So to create this new port group, issue the following commands:
Add the new port group:
esxcfg-vswitch --add-pg=SCVlan25 vSwitch0
Add it to required vlan:
esxcfg-vswitch --pg=SCVlan25 --vlan=25 vSwitch0
Now, esxcfg-vswitch -l
This would show you the added port group.

Next step is to add the service console port under this newly created port group.
Use the following command to get the listing:
esxcfg-vswif -l
Now, you would get the name of the interface from
this command, in my case it was vswif0.
Following command would be issued to put it in the right port-group:
esxcfg-vswif vswif0 -p SCVlan25
then again, "esxcfg-vswif -l" to confirm it.

Now your service console should be on the network. And you should be able to create other port groups using command line above or the Virtual Center as mentioned in the earlier post.

Another issue I ran into is that after deleting a virtual switch so that I can team the physical NICs, the other virtual switch would not show the physical NIC I wanted to add, in virtual center.
So this had to be done via command line also:
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic# vSwitch#
where vmnic# would be replaced by whatever NIC you want to add to that particular vswitch#.

VMware ESX VLAN trunking

We had been running VMWare ESX servers for a while without any VLAN trunking. This means, each physical NIC was part of a separate VLAN and this led to no network teaming(hence no failover) as number of NICs were be limited.
Another limitation was that we couldn't add any more VLANs as all the NICs were already used. This is when we decided its better use trunking in our environment. I got my start from following website for Cisco IOS configs:
ESX Server, NIC Teaming, and VLAN Trunking
This worked fine for the server on switches running Cisco IOS.
But since we are running some switches in hybrid config with CatOS, the following steps were taken on those switches for ESX server to work in trunking mode:

1. If you haven't created a native VLAN for ESX environment now, you would need to create that with following command:
set vlan "vlan-id" name "name"
"vlan-id" here is the vlan number you want to assign this new vlan and could be anything between normal range 1–1000 and extended range 1025–4096.
name doesn't have to specified but makes it easy to see what vlan is what.

2. Change the port to trunking mode:
set trunk "mod/port" on dot1q
or
set trunk "mod/port" on dot1q "vlan numbers"
depending on whether you want to allow all VLANs or certain VLANs on the port.

3. Set the native vlan on the port:
By default vlan 1 is the native vlan, to change it:
set vlan "vlan-id" "mod/port"
where "vlan-id" is the vlan number created in step 1 or the vlan number if it already exists in your network.

Now, on the ESX server side:
From the virtual center, go to configuration for the host and click on networking.
Then Add Networking, Choose Virtual Machine, choose the vswitch with the NIC(s), choose the name you want to call it and "vlan-id" for that port group.
You can repeat the same steps for whatever vlans you want to configure on the host.
After that you can Edit the settings for the Virtual Machine to point to their respective port-groups and should be good to go.