Brien M. Posey: So far, my primary focus in this article series has revolved primarily around the interaction between the physical and the virtual networks used by Hyper-V. In this article, I want to turn my attention to another aspect of virtual networking – VLANs.
Although VLANs have been around practically forever, they are one of those networking concepts that a lot of administrators don’t understand. Don’t get me wrong though, there is nothing overly difficult about setting up a VLAN. It’s just that VLANs aren’t one of those things that everyone uses. As such, the only exposure that many network administrators have had to VLANs is what they have received while studying for certification exams.
In spite of the fact that VLANs are usually optional in the world of physical networking, they are actually very important in virtual datacenters that are using Hyper-V. Before I explain why this is the case, I want to give you some background about VLANs.