Hey all,

Could anyone tell me, what is "vlan"? Its a future which goes with dedicated server. Its this kind a connection between my servers?

Thank you

Gross simplification: Broadcast traffic from other servers in the datacenter will not reach yours.

Lesser simplification: A vlan is a seperate LAN. Each server has it's own seperate LAN, and can only communicate to eachother via their internet IPs.

This is a security/privacy feature. Pretty much all dedicated server providers use them, as they cost nothing to implement (It's a setting/option/feature on their managed switches)

So, i can communicate with my other servers. Hmm.... If i transfer something from one server to another, i use bandwitch?

Depends on the host.

Each server you have is usually on it's own vlan. They can still communicate, however.

Some hosts, like ThePlanet (ServerMatrix, Insomnia 365) count ALL bandwidth, unless you use a direct connection between the server, or rent a switch.

Others, like EV1, provide seperate low-speed (10mbit in their case) secondary networks for server-to-server communication, that is NOT counted towards your total.

oh.. nice. ;) Ok, i understood. Thank you for help. Appreciate
:)

if vlan means you dont see broadcast traffic then that means every DC i been in is not implementing vlans as I usually see a lot of windows broadcast traffic in my firewall log's.

I can't speak for the datacenters you've been in, but I can speak about ThePlanet's datacenter. They implement vlans. I'm pretty sure EV1 does as well. Between these two you probably have a huge chunk of the market covered. Could be mistaken about EV1 though.

Originally posted by Guspaz
Could be mistaken about EV1 though.

Yes you are.

Oh well, I'll count myself lucky to be in ThePlanet's datacenter then.

they cost nothing to implement (It's a setting/option/feature on their managed switches)

... apart from buying the equipment in the first place that can switch and route large numbers of VLANs ;)

Each server you have is usually on it's own vlan. They can still communicate, however.

There are providers around that will allocated VLANs on a per-customer basis rather than per-server. Traffic between servers is then not charged for.

HTH

Hi,

With regards to transferring data between servers, so long as they are on the same switch/network and not on the other side of a router, they can theoretically be put on the same vlan if the datacentre will allow it.

If you have a large number of servers you may wish to consider a router, and then put each server in its own vlan behind your router. This keeps the server networks seperate but means that bandwidth between the servers isn't paid for. Not sure how many servers you have but it's a suggestion.

HTH

Dan

vlans also prevent other customers from stealing your ips which is a know problem with hosts that dont use vlans.

Originally posted by robinbalen
they cost nothing to implement (It's a setting/option/feature on their managed switches)

... apart from buying the equipment in the first place that can switch and route large numbers of VLANs ;)

Each server you have is usually on it's own vlan. They can still communicate, however.

There are providers around that will allocated VLANs on a per-customer basis rather than per-server. Traffic between servers is then not charged for.

HTH

Yes, this is of course assuming that the datacenter has managed switches. However, I'm not sure I'd want to host at a datacenter that couldn't afford managed switches.

Having a managed switch that can handle a few dozen VLANs is an entirely different ball game to having a managed switch and routing equipment for thousands of simultaneous VLANs.

I'd imagine each switch would only have to handle as many VLANs as it has ports, no?

As for the routing equipment, I guess you're right, it comes down to if a datacenter is willing to spend the cash on a good router. I'm not too clear on how VLANs work once you leave the switch though.

I'd imagine each switch would only have to handle as many VLANs as it has ports, no?

True in general for the access switches (although it's good to have some spare room incase people want more than one VLAN presented on their switch port), but if you're running the VLANs through core switches with the VLANs still intact to present to routers and so on, those switches need to be able to handle a lot more VLANs than ports they have ;)

But anyway, back to the topic at hand... ;)