Distributed Switch
Switches use MAC or IP addresses to forward and control traffic between hosts and between hosts and external networks. In a traditional data center, hosts remain at fixed locations and their connections to switches rarely change, so switch configurations are relatively static.
In virtualized data centers, switches often face new challenges, such as:
- VM MAC and IP addresses cannot always be determined before deployment.
- When a VM migrates, the corresponding configuration on physical switch ports must also be updated, increasing the risk of migration failure.
- When source and destination virtual machines are on the same host, network traffic might bypass the switch, preventing the switch from performing traffic control.
ZSphere provides distributed switches for forwarding and controlling traffic between VMs and between VMs and external networks.
A distributed switch is a logical switch distributed across each host, consisting of virtual switches, virtual machine NICs, and host NICs.
- The virtual switch forwards network traffic based on MAC addresses.
- Virtual machine NICs connect virtual machines to the virtual switch, providing data channels for virtual machine traffic.
- Host NICs serve as uplink ports for the virtual switch, forwarding cross-host virtual machine traffic to physical switches.