In VMware vSphere 6.5, vSphere standard switch (vSS) almost the same as what the physical switch offers in the real world. Then what’s the real need of vSphere distributed switch (vDS)? vSphere Distributed switch feature is not coming with vSphere standard license too. You need to buy the vSphere enterprise plus license to get this feature available. Let’s look at the pros and cons of the vSphere distributed switch.
Advantages of vSphere distributed switch: vDS
1. vSphere standard switch is created on individual ESXi hosts. Which means, when you have configured the HA or planning for vMotion , you must have similar vSwitch configuration on the target ESXi host. If not , VM’s will loose the network connectivity. If you would like to tweek the QoS policy on standard vSwtich , you must changes the policies on all the ESXi host’s vswtich manually. Maintaining the identical switch configuration on all the ESXi hosts is timing consuming and challenging .
vSphere distributed switch overcomes this issue since configuration is maintained across all the ESXi hosts which are participates in vDS. If you made any change on vDS , changes are pushed to all the ESXi hosts. This makes life easier where you have 1000 of VM’s running in large data-center. That’s the clear edge for vDS over vSS.
2. vSphere distributed switch brings Link aggregation control protocol (LACP), inbound/outbound network control are the key features.
Disadvantages of vSphere Distributed switch:
1. Licensing. You must have vSphere enterprise plus licensing to use the vSphere distributed switch.
2. Centralized configuration management also brings a lot of risks. If you commit a mistake on vDS configuration, it impacts all the ESXi hosts which are part of that vDS. Whereas in VSS, it just impact that specific ESXi host.
In the upcoming article, we will see how to create the vSphere distributed switch and how to migrate the VM’s from existing vswtich to vDS.