[c-nsp] PVLANs in a Hosting Environment

[Matthew Melbourne]

Hi,

We are investigating options to provide a "VLAN-per-customer" within a
hosting environment. Inside each VLAN could be hosting services, e.g.
hosted web servers, AD, Exchange (etc). In order to maximum the number
of supported VLANs, then the use of Private VLANs has been raised.
However, although L2 isolation is desirable between customers
(effectively a PVLAN community), there may be a requirement to
communicate at L3 (e.g. one customer accessing the web site of
another). A classical VLAN per customer would utilise more address
space than a PVLAN and would require an SVI per customer. What do
others do in this type of environment? We would want to offer
additional services going forward, e.g. firewalling/load-balancing
which may have implications for PVLAN awareness. A number of services
may well be hosted within a virtual environment, and it is my
understanding that all devices need to support PVLANs including
virtual switches within any VMware/HyperV-like server environment?

Cheers,

Matt

-- 
Matthew Melbourne