VMware networking - distributed switch

[ManateeMatt]

Odd question and I'm sure I can locate the info on them thar interwebs.

What is the point of the distributed switches in vmware? Is it just an easier way of deploying networks across many hosts?

Can distributed switch be use for storage or is it just for guest networks?

 

[defuseme2k]

It is a switch that spans an entire cluster, so instead of creating local vswitches on every host that needs to match for DRS to work... you create it one place and you're done. There are quite a few more differences than that, but that is a simple description.

You can run anything over it that you can run on a standard vSwitch, including storage.

 

[SpaceHonkey]

Remember that the dvSwitch relies on vCenter being up to make changes, so if you have an outage - things get fun.

 

[ManateeMatt]

It is a switch that spans an entire cluster, so instead of creating local vswitches on every host that needs to match for DRS to work... you create it one place and you're done. There are quite a few more differences than that, but that is a simple description.

You can run anything over it that you can run on a standard vSwitch, including storage.

I understand that there is probably more to the vswitch then what I am saying and I also understand that I can do more fancy things with it then just switching if needed.

So in my particular case we have servers with 8 Nics, my original thought was 4 for storage 4 for guest network / management/ non storage.

I'm guessing I should have 2 distributed switches, one for storage, then one for everything else. Similar setup to what was discussed here, but with distributed switches.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1576393

Remember that the dvSwitch relies on vCenter being up to make changes, so if you have an outage - things get fun.

Changes or run? as if suddenly for some reason that box gets shut off (I was planning on running it inside the vms with HA) does all switch functionality stop?

 

[Child of Wonder]

I understand that there is probably more to the vswitch then what I am saying and I also understand that I can do more fancy things with it then just switching if needed.

So in my particular case we have servers with 8 Nics, my original thought was 4 for storage 4 for guest network / management/ non storage.

I'm guessing I should have 2 distributed switches, one for storage, then one for everything else. Similar setup to what was discussed here, but with distributed switches.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1576393

You can design a dvswitch setup similar to a vswitch one.

Create one dvswitch with 2 uplinks for Mgmt, another with 2 uplinks for VMotion, another with 2 uplinks for VM traffic, and another for storage.

Changes or run? as if suddenly for some reason that box gets shut off (I was planning on running it inside the vms with HA) does all switch functionality stop?

Changes. It becomes a pain if you're having some sort of outage and need to make changes, add a host, add a VM, etc.