Details

Certain physical switches reserve certain VLAN IDs for internal purposes and often disallow traffic configured to these values. For example, Cisco Catalyst switches typically reserve VLANs 1001-1024 and 4094, while Nexus switches typically reserve 3968-4047 and 4094. Check with the documentation for your specific switch. Using a reserved VLAN might result in a denial of service on the network.

NOTE: Nessus has not performed this check. Please review the benchmark to ensure target compliance.

Solution

From the vSphere Web Client go to Networking >> Select a distributed port group >> Manage >> Settings >> Policies. Click Edit and under the VLAN section change the VLAN ID to not be a reserved VLAN ID and click OK.

or

From a PowerCLI command prompt while connected to the vCenter server run the following command:

Get-VDPortgroup ‘portgroup name’ | Set-VDVlanConfiguration -VlanId ‘New VLAN#’

Supportive Information

The following resource is also helpful.

• http://iasecontent.disa.mil/stigs/zip/U_VMware_vSphere_6-0_vCenter_Server_for_Windows_V1R4_STIG.zip

This security hardening control applies to the following category of controls within NIST 800-53: Configuration Management.This control applies to the following type of system VMware.

References

• 800-53|CM-6b.
• CAT|II
• CCI|CCI-000366
• Group-ID|V-63977
• Rule-ID|SV-78467r1_rule
• STIG-ID|VCWN-06-000020
• Vuln-ID|V-63977

Source

• Tenable.com/audits