Assuming VLANs are not configured, which of the following is true about traffic from a
virtual machine connected to a port group on a vNetwork Standard Switch with no
uplinks?
A.
Virtual machines on any virtual switch on the same ESX Server can receive the traffic
B.
The virtual switch will drop the packets if no uplink is present
C.
Only virtual machines in the same port group on the virtual switch can receive the
traffic
D.
Virtual machines in any port group on the virtual switch can receive the traffic
Explanation:
VMware Virtual Networking Concepts, page 6.
It is possible, and even reasonable, to assign the same VLAN ID to multiple port groups.
This would be useful if, for example, you wanted to give different groups of virtual
machines different physical Ethernet adapters in a NIC team for active use and for
standby use, while all the adapters are on the same VLAN.
Since a port group without an assigned VLAN has an implicit VLAN ID of 0, all port
groups without a VLAN ID will be in VLAN0. Multiple port groups with the same
VLAN can communicate with each other.
Physical Ethernet adapters serve as bridges between virtual and physical networks. In
VMware Infrastructure, they are called uplinks, and the virtual ports connected to them
are called uplink ports.
If no uplink exists there will be no communication with physical networks, but traffic
will propagate across virtual interfaces connected to the same switch.