Maximum vSphere™: Tips, How-Tos, and Best Practices for Working with VMware vSphere™ 4

6. Networking in vSphere

Networking is one area that often does not receive much attention when planning or architecting a virtual environment. There is much more to networking in vSphere than simply plugging your host’s physical NICs into physical switches and then configuring vSwitches. Networking in VI3 was pretty simple, as you only had a standard vSwitch to choose from. In vSphere you have more choices with the new Distributed vSwitch and support for third-party vSwitches. As a result, you have more decisions to make when planning your vSphere environment, as the additional vSwitch options make virtual network administration easier as well as add better management and more features. This chapter covers what you will need to know about networking ...