Routing and VLANs

[Bobby-P]

We have 4 MS 225 - 48 port switches that are replace un-managed Dell switches.  The switches are on 4 different floor and are not stacked.  We want to implement VLAN's for our network and I need to know if since the switches are not stacked will I need to create the VLAN's on each switch or will that information populate to each switch once I setup the VLAN's on one switch 

[Adam]

No, the most ideal design would be to create the VLANs on the gateway (Firewall).  Then use trunk configurations to connect the uplink ports between your gateway and switches.  Then you just setup access ports in the desired VLAN.  

Note:  One component of this will be your default and allowed VLANs.  You can get restrictive with that or set it to Any.  Many people will make the default VLAN one that they don't use.  They do this as a security mechanism since legit traffic should be in a tagged VLAN.  But that isn't a requirement. 

[Bobby-P]

We do not manage our existing firewall at this time. We are reviewing new firewalls and will be looking at an MX appliance. With Layer 3 routing I didn't think we would need the firewall anyway

[ww]

yes you need to set all ports to the layer2 vlans  you want. 

if you have only 1 switch that does the routing(if you want to enable traffic between the vlans) you only have to create one time the svi(layer3 vlans).

[Bobby-P]

This maybe the what we do. This challenge for now would be connecting the 3 switches to the one that will have the layer 3 vlans setup. With CDP /LLDP will we be able to identify devices and assign those devices to there respective vlan?

[PhilipDAth]

If you want a switch port in a specific vlan - you'll need to put that port into that vlan.

[Bobby-P]

This week we had a new twist added to this question.  We're setting a new UCS-mini and at the top of the rack we have 2 Catalyst 9300 switches stacked together.  It was recommended that we use the catalyst switches to setup and manage our vlans but I have found out the meraki's do not support the VTP protocol which to my understand means the vlans from the catalyst will not propagate to the meraki's.  So, will I need to create identical vlans on the meraki switches that match the catalyst setup?