A vSphere Distributed Switch provides centralized management and monitoring of the networking configuration of all hosts that are associated with the switch. You set up a distributed switch on a vCenter Server system, and its settings are propagated to all hosts that are associated with the switch.
A network switch in vSphere consists of two logical sections that are the data plane and the management plane. The data plane implements the package switching, filtering, tagging, and so on. The management plane is the control structure that you use to configure the data plane functionality. A vSphere Standard Switch contains both data and management planes, and you configure and maintain each standard switch individually.
A vSphere Distributed Switch separates the data plane and the management plane. The management functionality of the distributed switch resides on the vCenter Server system that lets you administer the networking configuration of your environment on a data center level. The data plane remains locally on every host that is associated with the distributed switch. The data plane section of the distributed switch is called a host proxy switch. The networking configuration that you create on vCenter Server (the management plane) is automatically pushed down to all host proxy switches (the data plane).
The vSphere Distributed Switch introduces two abstractions that you use to create consistent networking configuration for physical NICs, virtual machines, and VMkernel services.
- Uplink port group
- An uplink port group or dvuplink port group is defined during the creation of the distributed switch and can have one or more uplinks. An uplink is a template that you use to configure physical connections of hosts as well as failover and load balancing policies. You map physical NICs of hosts to uplinks on the distributed switch. At the host level, each physical NIC is connected to an uplink port with a particular ID. You set failover and load balancing policies over uplinks and the policies are automatically propagated to the host proxy switches, or the data plane. In this way you can apply consistent failover and load balancing configuration for the physical NICs of all hosts that are associated with the distributed switch.
- Distributed port group
- Distributed port groups provide network connectivity to virtual machines and accommodate VMkernel traffic. You identify each distributed port group by using a network label, which must be unique to the current data center. You configure NIC teaming, failover, load balancing, VLAN, security, traffic shaping , and other policies on distributed port groups. The virtual ports that are connected to a distributed port group share the same properties that are configured to the distributed port group. As with uplink port groups, the configuration that you set on distributed port groups on vCenter Server (the management plane) is automatically propagated to all hosts on the distributed switch through their host proxy switches (the data plane). In this way you can configure a group of virtual machines to share the same networking configuration by associating the virtual machines to the same distributed port group.
For example, suppose that you create a vSphere Distributed Switch on your data center and associate two hosts with it. You configure three uplinks to the uplink port group and connect a physical NIC from each host to an uplink. In this way, each uplink has two physical NICs from each host mapped to it, for example Uplink 1 is configured with vmnic0 from Host 1 and Host 2. Next you create the Production and the VMkernel network distributed port groups for virtual machine networking and VMkernel services. Respectively, a representation of the Production and the VMkernel network port groups is also created on Host 1 and Host 2. All policies that you set to the Production and the VMkernel network port groups are propagated to their representations on Host 1 and Host 2.
To ensure efficient use of host resources, the number of distributed ports of proxy switches is dynamically scaled up and down on hosts running ESXi 5.5 and later. A proxy switch on such a host can expand up to the maximum number of ports supported on the host. The port limit is determined based on the maximum number of virtual machines that the host can handle.
vSphere Distributed Switch Data Flow
The data flow from the virtual machines and VMkernel adapters down to the physical network depends on the NIC teaming and load balancing policies that are set to the distributed port groups. The data flow also depends on the port allocation on the distributed switch.
For example, suppose that you create the VM network and the VMkernel network distributed port groups, respectively with 3 and 2 distributed ports. The distributed switch allocates ports with IDs from 0 to 4 in the order that you create the distributed port groups. Next, you associate Host 1 and Host 2 with the distributed switch. The distributed switch allocates ports for every physical NIC on the hosts, as the numbering of the ports continues from 5 in the order that you add the hosts. To provide network connectivity on each host, you map vmnic0 to Uplink 1, vmnic1 to Uplink 2, and vmnic2 to Uplink 3.
To provide connectivity to virtual machines and to accommodate VMkernel traffic, you configure teaming and failover to the VM network and to the VMkernel network port groups. Uplink 1 and Uplink 2 handle the traffic for the VM network port group, and Uplink 3 handles the traffic for the VMkernel network port group.
On the host side, the packet flow from virtual machines and VMkernel services passes through particular ports to reach the physical network. For example, a packet sent from VM1 on Host 1 first reaches port 0 on the VM network distributed port group. Because Uplink 1 and Uplink 2 handle the traffic for the VM network port group, the packet can continue from uplink port 5 or uplink port 6 . If the packet goes through uplink port 5, it continues to vmnic0, and if the packet goes to uplink port 6, it continues to vmnic1.
