VMware vSphere Distributed Switch – Jason Nash Technical Deep Dive. This is a video from VMworld 2012 in San Francisco presented by Jason Nash from Varrow. He works as a datacenter practice director at Varrow, Carolina. Warrow is regional datacenter partner.
Jason Nash who is also an instructor of the recent training from TrainSignal called vSphere Advanced Networking Training. A training which I also detailed in my article here.
The free video which you’ll be able to watch, is the deep dive into vSphere Distributed switch (VDS). You’ll see the complexity, features, cost, deployment considerations and management.
You might already checked my article What’s new in networking in vSphere 5.1, where the enhancements to VDS are reviewed as well.
You’ll see the enhancements that VMware has done to VDS 5.1 (new in vSphere 5.1). The New vSphere web client now can do actions that the legacy windows client can’t. For example enabling a health check or enabling LACP must be done through the new web client, because you’ll don’t find that options through the legacy windows client – it’s not there any more….. WMware has stopped the development of the Windows client already…. You can still do the legacy actions through the windows client.
The VDS licensing – Yes you’ll need vSphere Enterprise Plus, that’s the “bad” news. But, as he says, you get more with Enterprise Plus now than before. Host profiles, third party multipathing…..
With VDS the importance of vCenter server grows, since the VDS is tightened to vCenter the way that the configuration is stored there, even if the configuration can be saved now to an external file. vCenter should be protected as a tier one app.
VDS Deployment considerations
You’ll see what to think of before the migration. Why the usual way is to build a single VDS instead of putting for example NFS traffic with uplinks into one VDS and VM traffic with uplinks into another VDS.
This is an example for 1Gb NICs, but there is an example for 10Gb NICs as well. It’s actually a config referenced by Kendrick Coleman, fellow vExpert and blogger.
VMware vSphere Distributed Switch - Example of configuration of VDS with 8 NICs – 1Gb NIC
VMware vSphere Distributed Switch – what’s new
- Network health check
- Backup/restore configuration of VDS
- Backup/restore configuration of dvPortgroup
- Revert to the previous dvPortgroup configuration
A quick quote from the description of the video of VMware vSphere Distributed Switch – Technical deep dive.
This session will provide a technical deep dive into the vSphere Distributed Switch, including design and deployment considerations, configuration, migration steps, tuning and troubleshooting.
Special attention will be paid to migrating an existing production environment from the standard vSwitch to the vSphere Distributed Switch with little or no disruption.
Extended features such as network I/O control, network resource pools, and load-based teaming will be discussed in depth, with use cases and recommendations given.
Finally, methods and tools for troubleshooting network connectivity and performance problems will also be highlighted. A live lab environment will be included, making for a very interactive session
Here is the Free VMworld 2012 Video.
Also good to check is the Official PDF concerning the VMware vSphere Distributed Switch Configuration and Migration. In this paper there are many schemas and explication. It’s really usefull.
Hint: I downloaded the video to play it then with VLC, and since Jason speaks quite fast, I do a playback with slower speed.. (Go to Menu Playback > Slower….)
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