Additional VLAN/Interface

Apple Support Communities,


Hello,


I am running OSX Server on my Mac Mini and need to create a separate subnet in addition to my vlan 10.0.0.0/24. I need to assign this new subnet range

to a group of VM Based devices loaded in Parallels in the Mini Server and I also need this subnet to be routable to my other existing subnet 10.0.0.0/24 which is my NAT enabled. The only interfaces I have currently running are the ethernet and virtual for VPN.


I am familar with how to create VNIC's in ESXi but not in Mac requesting assistance.


Thanks


V/R

Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Mar 19, 2016 6:15 PM

3 replies

Jun 13, 2018 2:22 PM in response to John Lockwood

John Lockwood,


Hi, Thank You for your response. In this situation I will go with option 1. Question I followed this guide , Section II when I created an

VLAN for VPN. How can I add a second statement to this NAT Rule for the LAN portion? I want to make sure I do not make any mistakes.


And offsubject do you know the easiest way on a Mac to run NTP Strat 2 and for Linux based clients that need and NTP source?


Thanks.

Mar 21, 2016 4:36 AM in response to Community User

It sounds like you want to end up with a total of three networks, two of which are VLANs and one is the main Mac LAN. It also sounds like you already have one VLAN added to the Mac and used for VPN server purposes.


There are undoubtedly more than one means to do this, here are two possibilities.


Option 1

  • Add another VLAN to the Mac to match what you want to use for the Parallels VM machines
  • Add another rule on the Mac server to forward packets to/from that VLAN just the same as you have done for the existing VPN VLAN


(You are already probably aware of how to create VLAN interfaces on a Mac since you seem to have already done so for the VPN services but see OS X Yosemite: Use a virtual local area network this applies to El Capitan as well.)

Option 2

  • Fit an additional network adapter to the Mac mini either a USB or Thunderbolt adapter
  • Connect this additional Ethernet adapter to a second port on a network switch which is configured for this additional VLAN
  • Have the switch do the routing between this additional VLAN and the main network


Note: If you have a hardware router and/or firewall between this Mac and the Internet you are almost certainly going to need to add static IP routes to it to tell it where to route traffic to, to get to the VLANs.


For what it's worth it is possible to run ESXi on a Mac mini and even to have OS X running as a guest in ESXi. There are varying opinions by non-Lawyers about exactly what Apple's software license for OS X specifically means but to some extent running a virtual copy of OS X on a real Mac is allowed. See section 2.B - http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX1011.pdf


Arguable it allows running OS X in a VM specifically to use it as a 'server' which seems to cover your situation, but equally arguable it does not allow using ESXi but only allows using Parallels, VMware or Virtualbox. This later issue being due to the fact that while Parallels, VMware and Virtualbox all run under OS X, ESXi does not. This is as per 2.B.iii which says 'that is already running the Apple Software'.


Note: There are two new virtualisation tools for Mac called Veertu and Xhyve which have the potential of becoming options which like Parallels etc. would based on the above still count as means to legally run OS X VMs but as yet they do not support OS X guests only Linux and Windows.

Mar 21, 2016 6:10 AM in response to Community User

With regards to forwarding traffic to the additional VLAN the settings need to be a little different because I am presuming that while using NAT for the VPN is fine for the other you probably don't want NAT. You would have to lookup details of the same command used for the VPN setup and see what additional options are available.


With regards to NTP the functionality is built-in to OS X Server but needs manually enabling.


See a previous post of mine here Re: OS X Server as NTP server and follow the links in it for more details. To summarise you make sure the Mac is set to sync to an external NTP server and then 'turn on' the ability to listen for NTP requests from other clients. The Mac will only act as an NTP server if it itself can contact another NTP server, this is why in one of my own cases I need to create a special loopback address.

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Additional VLAN/Interface

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.