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VLANS and VLAN Groups

Each VLAN may be assigned to a site, tenant, and/or VLAN group.

Each VLAN must be assigned a status. The following statuses are available by default:

  • Active
  • Reserved
  • Deprecated

In general, VLANs can have overlapping names and IDs. The exception to this is VLANs within a VLAN Group: each VLAN within a group must have a unique ID and name.
A VLAN Group may be assigned to a specific site, but a Group cannot belong to multiple sites. VLANs may be assigned to a specific site as well.

The Nautobot documentation has more info about VLANs and VLAN Groups.

VLAN Example

The following example will show:

  • Creating a vlan 200 without a site assignment (global scope)
  • Creating two VLANs, each with overlapping Names and IDs: ID = 100 and Name = vlan 100
    • Neither of the vlan 100 instances will be assigned to a group, but each of the VLANs will be assigned to a different site (site-specific scope)
  • How the site-specific and global scopes affect which VLANs can be assigned on which Devices

Note

This example will require a Site (Ottawa 1) within a Region (Ottawa) in the North America Region in addition to the Vancouver 1 Site and Vancouver Region created prior. Refer back to the Creating a Site and Creating a Region sections to do so.

Creating the VLANs

  1. Click on IPAM in the top navigation menu
  2. Look for the VLANS option and click on the + to go to the Add a new VLAN form
  3. Populate ID with 200
  4. Populate Name with vlan 200
  5. Select Status as Active
  6. Click on Create and Add Another to save; you will then be taken to the Add a new VLAN form

Note

The required parameters to create a new VLAN are bolded in the Add a new VLAN form: ID, Name, and Status

Create vlans 1

Now we'll create two instances of VLANs, each with ID = 100 and Name = vlan 100 and an Active Status. The differentiator will be that one instance will be assigned to the Vancouver 1 Site and the other to the Ottawa 1 Site.

On the Add a new VLAN form:

  1. Populate ID with 100
  2. Populate Name with vlan 100
  3. Select Status as Active
  4. Select Vancouver from the Region selector drop-down
  5. Select Vancouver 1 from the Site selector drop-down
  6. Click on the Create and Add Another button

Note

The Region drop-down selection in step 4 is optional and only meant to narrow down the options presented in the Site drop-down selector in Step 5. A VLAN cannot be assigned to a Region.

  1. Populate ID with 100
  2. Populate Name with vlan 100
  3. Select Status as Active
  4. Select Ottawa from the Region selector drop-down
  5. Select Ottawa 1 from the Site selector drop-down
  6. Click on the Create button when complete with the second instance

Create vlans 2

Once you've created the three VLANs and then hit the Create button, you will be taken to the VLANs main page. On that page, you'll see the three VLANs and the Site assignment for each one. Each vlan 100 instance will have a Site assignment, while vlan 200 will not:

Vlan main page

Assigning VLANs to an Interface

To assign a VLAN to an Interface:

  1. Click on IPAM on the top-level navigation menu
  2. Select Devices to go to the Devices main page
  3. Click on the name of the Device you wish to add a VLAN to (edge2.van1) in this example
  4. Click on the Edit button for the xe-0/0/0 Interface to go to the Editing interface xe-0/0/0 page
  5. On the Editing interface xe-0/0/0 page, set 802.1Q Mode to Access (or whatever mode you need) and then click on the VLAN drop-down selector. Notice that there are two choices:
    • One choice is the vlan 100 instance specifically assigned to the Vancouver 1 Site
    • The other choice is vlan 200, which was not assigned to a Site, and thus has a global scope

Add vlan to interface 1

Note

The vlan 100 instance that is assigned to the Ottawa 1 Site does not show up as an option for the Vancouver1 Site

Add vlan to interface 2