Networking monitoring methods on a VDS

Most environments will need a method to monitor the network traffic in one form or the other. Two of the common methods in real-world networking are SPAN (Switch Port Analyzer) and NetFlow. VMware employs both these concepts on the VDS:

  • SPAN is simply referred to as port mirroring on a VDS
  • NetFlow

Port mirroring

If there is a need to clone vNIC traffic for capturing or monitoring purposes, then that can be achieved by configuring port mirroring on a VDS. It supports four types of mirror sessions:

  1. Distributed port mirroring - this is used to mirror traffic from vNIC-assigned dvPorts to other vNIC-assigned dvPorts across hosts.
  2. Remote mirroring source - this is used to mirror traffic from vNIC-assigned dvPorts to ...

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