How can I set up VLANs in a way that won't put me at risk for VLAN hopping?

Posted by hobodave on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by hobodave
Published on 2011-02-22T20:43:07Z Indexed on 2011/02/22 23:26 UTC
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security

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virtualization

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vlan

We're planning to migrate our production network from a VLAN-less configuration to a tagged VLAN (802.1q) configuration. This diagram summarizes the planned configuration:

VLAN configuration

One significant detail is that a large portion of these hosts will actually be VMs on a single bare-metal machine. In fact, the only physical machines will be DB01, DB02, the firewalls and the switches. All other machines will be virtualized on a single host.

One concern that has been is that this approach is complicated (overcomplicated implied), and that the VLANs are only providing an illusion of security, because "VLAN hopping is easy".

Is this a valid concern, given that multiple VLANs will be used for a single physical switch port due to virtualization? How would I setup my VLANs appropriately to prevent this risk?

Also, I've heard that VMWare ESX has something called "virtual switches". Is this unique to the VMWare hypervisor? If not, is it available with KVM (my planned hypervisor of choice)?. How does that come into play?

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