I just figured out a very, very hard problem at work without access to the tools I really needed to troubleshoot it.

So, kids, when you have an inconsistent switch config and ESXi is expecting one VLAN and is instead receiving untagged traffic due to an erroneous native VLAN being configured only on some switchports, you gon’ have problems.

Took a while to figure out, even for me. But I did it without switch access by toggling VLANs on the ESXi host. Process of elimination is always slower than process of confirmation.

And that is why I got four job offers. That, and my humility. 😉