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policy simply because the static nature of the source MAC address is the same as the static
nature of a vSwitch port assignment. The source MAC-based policy is also best used when you
have more virtual network adapters than physical network adapters. In addition, VMs still can-
not use multiple physical adapters unless coni gured with multiple virtual network adapters.
Multiple virtual network adapters inside the guest OS of a VM will provide multiple source
MAC addresses and allow multiple physical network adapters.
Figure 5.33
h e source MAC-
based load-
balancing policy,
as the name sug-
gests, ties a virtual
network adapter to
a physical network
adapter based on
the MAC address.
00:50:56:6F:C1:E9
00:50:56:80:8A:BE
00:50:56:3F:A1:B2
00:50:56:AE:01:0C
ESXi host
vSwitch0
vSwitch1
Physical
switch
Physical
switch
Virtual Switch to Physical Switch
To eliminate a single point of failure, you can connect the physical network adapters in NIC teams
set to use the vSwitch port-based or source MAC-based load-balancing policies to diff erent physical
switches; however, the physical switches must belong to the same layer 2 broadcast domain. Link
aggregation using 802.3ad teaming is not supported with either of these load-balancing policies.
Reviewing IP Hash-Based Load Balancing
The third load-balancing policy available for NIC teams is the IP hash-based policy, also called
the
out
-
IP
policy. This policy, shown in Figure 5.34, addresses the limitation of the other two pol-
icies. The IP hash-based policy uses the source and destination IP addresses to calculate a hash.
