Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Network Interface Card Team The aggregation of physical network interface cards (NICs)
to form a single logical communication channel. Different types of NIC teams provide vary-
ing levels of trafi c load balancing and fault tolerance.
vmxnet Adapter A virtualized network adapter operating inside a guest operating sys-
tem (guest OS). The vmxnet adapter is a high-performance, 1 Gbps virtual network adapter
that operates only if VMware Tools have been installed. The vmxnet adapter is sometimes
referred to as a paravirtualized driver. The vmxnet adapter is identii ed as Flexible in the VM
properties.
vlance Adapter A virtualized network adapter operating inside a guest OS. The vlance
adapter is a 10/100 Mbps network adapter that is widely compatible with a range of operating
systems and is the default adapter used until the VMware Tools installation is completed.
e1000 Adapter A virtualized network adapter that emulates the Intel e1000 network adapter.
The Intel e1000 is a 1 Gbps network adapter. The e1000 network adapter is the most common
in 64-bit VMs.
Now that you have a better understanding of the components involved and the terminology
that you'll see in this chapter, we'll discuss how these components work together to form a vir-
tual network in support of VMs and ESXi hosts.
Your answers to the following questions will, in large part, determine the design of your vir-
tual networking:
Do you have or need a dedicated network for management trafi c, such as for the manage-
ment of physical switches?
Do you have or need a dedicated network for vMotion trafi c?
Do you have an IP storage network? Is this IP storage network a dedicated network? Are
you running iSCSI or NAS/NFS?
How many NICs are standard in your ESXi host design?
Do the NICs in your hosts run 1 Gb Ethernet or 10 Gb Ethernet?
Do you need extremely high levels of fault tolerance for VMs?
Is the existing physical net work composed of VLANs?
Do you want to extend the use of VLANs into the virtual switches?
As a precursor to setting up a virtual networking architecture, you need to identify and doc-
ument the physical network components and the security needs of the network. It's also impor-
tant to understand the architecture of the existing physical network, because that also greatly
inl uences the design of the virtual network. If the physical network can't support the use of
VLANs, for example, then the virtual network's design has to account for that limitation.
Throughout this chapter, as we discuss the various components of a virtual network in
more detail, we'll also provide guidance on how the various components i t into an overall vir-
tual network design. A successful virtual network combines the physical network, NICs, and
vSwitches, as shown in Figure 5.1.
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