Introduction

Networking is the backbone of any infrastructure, be it virtual or physical. In this chapter, we will learn how to create and configure the basic switching constructs of vSphere networking.

Before we start learning how to create these constructs, it is important to have a brief understanding of them.

• vSphere Standard Switch (vSS): It is a software switching construct local to each ESXi server that provides a network infrastructure for the virtual machines running on that server. Unlike a physical switch, the vSphere Standard Switch is not a managed switch. It doesn't learn MAC addresses and build a CAM table like a physical switch, but it does know the MAC addresses of the virtual machine vNICs connected to it.

  

  The vSwitch has logical ports to which a virtual machine's virtual NIC connects.

  Note

  The logical ports themselves cannot be chosen during the configuration; it is always a port group "label" that a virtual machine's vNIC would be configured to use.

• vSphere Distributed Switch...