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VLANS and VLAN Groups

Each VLAN may be assigned to a location, 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 location, but a Group cannot belong to multiple locations. VLANs may be assigned to a specific location 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 location 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 location (location-specific scope)
  • How the location-specific and global scopes affect which VLANs can be assigned on which Devices

Note

This example will require a Location (Ottawa 1) within a Parent Location (Ottawa) in the North America Parent Location in addition to the Vancouver 1 Location and Vancouver Parent Location created prior. Refer back to the Create a Loaction sections to do so.

Creating the VLANs

  1. Click on IPAM in the left sidebar 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 ANG01 from the Location selector drop-down
  5. Click on the Create and Add Another button

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 BRE01 from the Location selector drop-down
  5. 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 Location assignment for each one. Each vlan 100 instance will have a Location 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 left sidebar 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 (ang01-edge-01) 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 ANG01 Location
    • The other choice is vlan 200, which was not assigned to a Location, and thus has a global scope

Add VLAN to interface 1

Note

The vlan 100 instance that is assigned to the BRE01 Location does not show up as an option for the ANG01 Location

Add VLAN to interface 2