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Description

This article explains how you can "swap" the VLANs attached to two different NICs. This function is particularly useful after deploying a multiple NIC server from a Guest OS Customization Image. When deploying from such images, you have no control over which virtual NIC will be assigned within the Guest Operating system. This function allows you to "fix" such a deployment if the ordering isn't to your liking. For more details on this issue, see Introduction to Cloud Server Provisioning, OS Customization, and Best Practices.

Note this function requires you to adjust the IPv4 and IPv6 address of the NICs after the VLANs are exchanged as it only makes changes to the Virtual Hardware connections to the VLANs.

Prerequisites:

  1. User has Primary Administrator, Server, or Network Role
  2. Cloud Server must have two or more NICs (MCP 2.0 only). See How to Add an Additional NIC to a Cloud Server
  3. If one of the NICs being "switched" is a Primary NIC AND the server currently has Backups enabled, the operation is prohibited as it would break Cloud Backup services. See How to Disable Cloud Backup for a Server
  4. If either one of the NICs being "switched" is a member of a VLAN Security Group, the operation is also prohibited. See How to Add or Remove a Cloud Server NIC to / from a VLAN Security Group
  5. You cannot exchange NIC VLANs if the Server is in a state which requires it to be restarted. See the "Adding and Managing Disks" section of Introduction to Cloud Server Local Storage ("Disks") and Disk Speeds

Content / Solution:

  1. From the Home page, select the Data Center where the Cloud Server is located:


  2. The Data Center dashboard will be displayed. Select the Network Domain where the Cloud Server located:


  3. The Network Domain dashboard will be displayed. Click on the Server tab to expand the list of Servers, then select the Server whose NICs you want to Exchange:


  4. Navigate to the Networking tab of the Server dashboard. Click on the Actions menu and select Exchange NIC VLANs from the drop-down menu:

     

  5. The Exchange NIC VLANs dialog will be displayed:

     

  6. Click on the 2 NIC VLANs you want to exchange, then click Save:

    Note: If you selected a row in error, you can click on it again to de-select it and make another selection. You only select 2 NICs at a time. 

  7. The system will display a message indicating that the operation is in progress:


  8. The system will display the progress of the operation at the top of the Server dashboard:
     
     

  9. Once complete, the NIC VLANs will have been exchanged:


  10. Once the operation is complete, you will need to update the IPv4 and IPv6 Addresses for each NIC in the Guest OS to make them correspond to the new VLANs. This function only makes changes at the virtual hardware level - not within the Guest OS. If you have switched the VLAN of the gateway IP, you may have lost network connectivity and need to use console access to log into the Guest OS. For details, see How to Get Virtual Console Access to a Cloud Server
     

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