Follow the virtualization tutorial where you will learn how to configure virtual networking, virtual switches, VSS Functionality to help you for interviews and administer ESX servers.
What is virtual networking?
We have virtual machines connecting and communicating with other devices on the network, now those virtual machines can range from physical server, appliances and other networking devices that are available on the physical network.
The virtual networking features of ESX are the cornerstone of building an IP network for virtual machines that integrates seamlessly with existing physical server environment.
ESX server discoveries to identify network IP addresses, this facilitates understanding which network an adapter is connected to. Note the IP range can be inaccurate if no addresses are found.
What are virtual switches or VSS virtual standard switches?
- VSS are logical switches that reside in the VMkernal of each ESX host.
- VSS created in ESX can have as few as 8 available ports up to 4088 ports per switch.
- Each virtual NIC connected to a virtual switch will have its own MAC address.
- VSS can be bound to one or more physical network adapters.
VSS Functionality:
Each virtual standard switch can contain one or more connection types or port groups that define the types of communications expected through the virtual switch.
VSS operates at layer 2 and can provide VLAN tagging, security, check-sum and segmentation offload units.
Types of vSwitches:
There are different types of vSwitches which are as given below:
- Internal only: used for communication of two virtual machines on the same ESX server host
- Single adapter: a virtual switch bound to a single physical adapter used for communication with resource on the physical network
- NIC team: a virtual switch bound to 2 or more physical adapters used to provide redundancy and bandwidth aggregation for communication with resources on the physical network.
