Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
For VMs to communicate with resources beyond the VMs hosted on the local ESXi host, a
vSwitch must be coni gured to use at least one physical network adapter, or uplink. A vSwitch
can be bound to a single network adapter or bound to two or more network adapters.
A vSwitch bound to at least one physical network adapter allows VMs to establish communi-
cation with physical servers on the network or with VMs on other ESXi hosts. That's assuming,
of course, that the VMs on the other ESXi hosts are connected to a vSwitch that is bound to at
least one physical network adapter. Just like a physical network, a virtual network requires con-
nectivity from end to end. Figure 5.6 shows the communication path for VMs connected to a
vSwitch bound to a physical network adapter. In the diagram, when vm1 on pod-1-blade-5 needs
to communicate with vm2 on pod-1-blade-8, the trafi c from the VM passes through vSwitch0
(via a VM port group) to the physical network adapter to which the vSwitch is bound. From
the physical network adapter, the trafi c will reach the physical switch (PhySw1). The physical
switch (PhySw1) passes the trafi c to the second physical switch (PhySw2), which will pass the
trafi c through the physical network adapter associated with the vSwitch on pod-1-blade-8. In
the last stage of the communication, the vSwitch will pass the trafi c to the destination virtual
machine vm2.
Figure 5.6
A vSwitch with
a single network
adapter allows VMs
to communicate
with physical serv-
ers and other VMs
on the network.
vm1
vm2
pod-1-blade-5
pod-1-blade-8
vSwitch0
vSwitch0
vmnic0
vmnic1
vmnic2
vmnic0
vmnic1
vmnic2
PhySw1
PhySw2
The vSwitch associated with a physical network adapter provides VMs with the amount
of bandwidth the physical adapter is coni gured to support. All the VMs will share this band-
width when communicating with physical machines or VMs on other ESXi hosts. In this way, a
vSwitch is once again similar to a physical switch. For example, a vSwitch bound to a network
adapter with a 1 Gbps maximum speed will provide up to 1 Gbps of bandwidth for the VMs
connected to it; similarly, a physical switch with a 1 Gbps uplink to another physical switch pro-
vides up to 1 Gbps of bandwidth between the two switches for systems attached to the physical
switches.
A vSwitch can also be bound to multiple physical network adapters. In this coni guration, the
vSwitch is sometimes referred to as a NIC team , but in this topic we'll use the term NIC team or
NIC teaming to refer specii cally to the grouping of network connections, not to refer to a vSwitch
with multiple uplinks.
 
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