Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Distributed Switch: 5.5.0: This is the latest version, and it's supported on only
vSphere 5.5 or later. This distributed switch adds Trafi c Filtering and Marking and
enhanced support for LACP.
◆
In this case, select vSphere Distributed Switch Version 5.5.0 and click Next.
6.
Specify the number of uplink ports, as illustrated in Figure 5.46.
Figure 5.46
h e number of
uplinks controls
how many physical
adapters from each
host can serve as
uplinks for the dis-
tributed switch.
7.
On the same screen shown in Figure 5.46, select whether you want Network I/O Control
enabled or disabled. Also select whether you want to create a default port group and, if
so, what the name of that default port group should be. For this example, leave Network
I/O Control enabled, and create a default port group with the name of your choosing.
Click Next.
8.
Review the settings for your new distributed switch. If everything looks correct, click
Finish; otherwise, use the Back button to go back and change settings as needed.
After you complete the New Distributed Switch wizard, a new distributed switch will appear
in the list of distributed switches in the vSphere Web Client. You can click the new distributed
switch to see the ESXi hosts connected to it (none yet), the VMs hosted on it (none yet), the dis-
tributed ports groups on (only one—the one you created during the wizard), and the uplink
port groups (of which there is also only one).
All this information is also available using the vSphere CLI or vSphere Management Assistant,
but due to the nature of how the esxcli command is structured, you'll need to have an ESXi host
added to the distributed switch i rst. Let's look at how that's done.
vSphere Distributed Switches Require vCenter Server
h is may seem obvious, but it's important to point out that because of the shared nature of a vSphere
Distributed Switch, vCenter Server is required. h at is, you cannot have a vSphere Distributed
Switch in an environment that is not being managed by vCenter Server.
Once you've created a distributed switch, it is relatively easy to add an ESXi host. When
the ESXi host is created, all of the distributed port groups will automatically be propagated to
the new host with the correct coni guration. This is the distributed nature of the distributed
switch—as coni guration changes are made via the vSphere Web Client, vCenter Server pushes
those changes out to all participating ESXi hosts. VMware administrators who are used to man-
aging large ESXi clusters and having to repeatedly create vSwitches and port groups across all
the servers individually will be very pleased with the reduction in administrative overhead that
distributed switches offer.
