VMware VSphere 5.0 Network Management

The network is the foundation of VMware VSphere 5.0, and all virtual machines need to communicate over the network. If all virtual machines are considered to be physical machines, then on the network topology, different network connection devices and methods such as NIC and switch are required. In virtualization, these devices can be implemented in a virtualized way. This chapter focuses on VMware VSphere 5.0 network management.

I. Overview of the VMware VSphere 5.0 Network

VMware Vsphere uses a distributed architecture that relies heavily on network connectivity. To take advantage of virtualization, you need to optimize the virtual network infrastructure in your Vsphere data center. To optimize, you need to understand the components of a virtual network and how the components are exchanged for the management and resources of the virtual machine. The architecture of the Vsphere Data center includes the architecture of the Vnetwork standard switch, the architecture of the distributed switch, and the third-party switch.

(i) VMware VSphere 5.0 Physical and virtual networks

1. Physical network Connection

VMware Vsphere's infrastructure requires the support of a physical network. A physical network is a network that is built between physical machines to enable the physical machines to send and receive data between them, and VMware ESXi runs on top of the physical machine. Each ESXi host cannot leave the physical network, and once it leaves the physical network, the virtual network inside is meaningless. The typical vsphere datacenter consists of a number of basic physical component blocks, such as X86 compute servers, storage arrays, virtual machines, Management Servers, and desktop clients, all of which require physical networks for connectivity.

2.VMware vsphere Virtual Network

A virtual network is a network of logical connections between virtual machines running on a single physical machine to send and receive data to each other. A virtual machine can connect to a virtual network that is created when the network is added. Each virtual machine has one or more network cards, which are communicated through a virtual network, allowing the virtual machines in the datacenter to be networked like physical machines in a physical environment. It responds to the standard Ethernet protocol in the same way as a physical NIC. The external agent does not detect that it is communicating with a virtual machine.

In VMware vSphere virtual networks, virtual networks provide network elements similar to physical environments, including virtual network interface cards (virtual NIC), VSphere distributed Switch (VDS), distributed port groups, vsphere Standard switch (VSS) and port groups. A virtual switch can connect its uplink to multiple physical Ethernet adapters to enable NIC binding. With network adapter bindings, two or more physical adapters can be used to distribute traffic loads or to provide passive failover in the event of a physical adapter hardware failure or network outage. The port group is a unique concept for virtual networks. A port group is a policy setting mechanism that manages the networks that are connected to a port group. A virtual switch can have multiple port groups. Instead of connecting to a specific port on the virtual switch, the virtual machine connects its virtual network card to the port group. Even if the virtual machines connected to the same port group are on separate physical servers, these virtual machines are also part of the same network within the virtual environment.

(ii) VMware vsphere virtual network and physical network connectivity

1. One ESXi server and one network card

The simplest VMware vsphere architecture is an ESXI host and a NIC (also known as a network adapter) that runs several virtual machines, which is also the easiest to understand the connectivity of the vsphere virtual network to the physical network. All connections are made through this network card, whether it is a storage network, a virtual machine network, or a management network, which communicates through this physical network card. The disadvantage of this way is that all communications go a physical network card, causing the network card overload, affecting the normal communication, single-chip network card can not do data transmission redundancy, may cause a single point of failure.

2. One ESXi server and multiple network cards

If you have an ESXI server and multiple network cards running several virtual machines inside, then we can choose a variety of routes, provided that the physical network card communication must be able to reach the destination. We can set up a different network for the virtual machine, different IP address, or set a few physical network ports to virtual standard switches, virtual machines through the connection of these virtual switches to communicate, so that the virtual machine network can be unified management, you can also set up a number of virtual standard switches for business isolation and so on. An ESXI server and multiple network cards ensure that each data transmission can be based on different physical network cards to communicate, increase the bandwidth of transmission, and can do network card redundancy, reduce the hardware network card failure caused by communication interruption. The disadvantage is that when this ESXi host or the ESXi hardware that is installed fails, the virtual function is not guaranteed to work properly.

3. Multiple ESXI servers and multiple network cards
Multiple ESXI servers and multiple network cards allow for better network planning and unified management of the network on ESXi. You can use a distributed virtual Switch to connect all ESXi server NICs to a distributed virtual switch, so that we can manage it globally, set up virtual machine networks, storage networks, and manage networks, and reduce unnecessary hassles and human actions to set up on each ESXi server. Multiple ESXI servers and multiple network cards are the best way to configure the virtual function and normal communication, as well as the base of the ESXi host for Cluster setup, DRS Setup, high availability settings, and dual standby. However, configuring multiple ESXi servers can significantly increase server and ESXi licensing costs, as well as increase physical network switches and third-party virtual switches as required, and network configuration is more complex.

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VMware VSphere 5.0 Network Management