Linux sysadmin here, but ignorant of network switch configuration.

Currently my physical Linux (RHEL 5+, SLES 10+) systems are connected to access ports, and working well. Soon they are all moving to another site, so I will need to change all their IPs. I have hundreds of systems and they don't all fit on one VLAN. My question is about the physical hookup and what switch configuration to request at the destination.

Ideally I do not want to have to deal with exactly matching systems to access ports, because there will be more than two VLANs.

If at the destination, the switch ports are trunk ports configured to allow all of the VLANs set up for us, do I need to do anything on the Linux systems besides changing the IP, netmask, and gateway? Or will I have to enable 802.11q on the operating system and configure it to tag traffic?

A trunk port can accept two types of traffic:

1. Frames with 802.1q VLAN tags will be sent to the VLAN specified by the tag (as long as the VLAN in question is defined as valid for the port)
2. Untagged frames will be sent to the trunk port's "native" VLAN (the trunk port basically acts as an access port)

In other words, you either have to configure each switch port as belonging to a specific access VLANs depending on which host will be using the port, or you have to configure a VLAN interface on each host and connect them to trunk ports.