This presentation discusses some of the networking challenges created by the pervasive adoption of server virtualization with VMware vSphere, and some of the solutions that are appearing in response.

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2. vSphere Networking
Challenges and Solutions
How VMware vSphere is shaping the
direction of the networking industry
Scott Lowe, VCDX 39 / CTO, VMware Affinity Team, EMC
vExpert, Author, Blogger, Geek
http://blog.scottlowe.org / Twitter: @scott_lowe

3. Agenda
•A brief review of terminology
• Traffic consolidation
• Network management and troubleshooting
• VLANs and expanding L2 domains
• Stretched VLANs
• Multi-tenancy and increased scale

4. A Brief Review of Terminology
• vSwitch (and Distributed vSwitch)
• Port group (and Distributed Port Group)
• Uplink
• VLAN
• Virtual NIC

5. Traffic Consolidation
• Thereare now multiple OS instances and multiple traffic
types contending for bandwidth
• There is new virtualization-specific traffic (vMotion, FT)
• This requires new tools to help manage contention
• Network I/O Control (at the vSphere layer)
• QoS (at the network layer)
• Virtualization-integrated switching solutions (more on that
in a bit)

6. Traffic Consolidation
(continued)
• Establishednetwork vendors are driving higher bandwidth
standards (40 GE and 100 GE products recently introduced)
• Some new and upcoming vendors are using alternate
technologies (consider Xsigo's use of InfiniBand, for
example)

7. Network Management and
Troubleshooting
• Movement of the access layer into the hypervisor means a
loss of visibility, control, and (in some cases) functionality
• VMware has added functionality to distributed vSwitches to
help with some of this (NetFlow, port mirroring)
• Other solutions exist
• Hypervisor bypass (think Cisco VIC, SR-IOV)
• More full-featured virtual switch (think Nexus 1000V)

8. VLANs and Expanding L2
Domains
• Physical systems now need access to multiple VLANs
• VLANs must be provisioned to every physical host that
might run a workload on that VLAN
• Required in order to support vMotion
• This results in very large L2 (broadcast) domains
• Large L2 domains generally not recommended by network
architects

9. VLANs and Expanding L2
Domains (continued)
• Some switch vendors address this through dynamic VLAN
pruning and vCenter integration
• In the long term, new technologies are being developed
• An example is Edge Virtual Bridging (EVB), standardized
as 802.1Qbg
• EVB allows VLANs to be provisioned (and deprovisioned)
dynamically as needed

10. Stretched VLANs
• The desire to do long-distance vMotion means L2 domains
stretched over distance
•A variety of technologies exist to enable stretched VLANs:
• Ethernet over MPLS (EoMPLS)
• Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV)
• Stretched VLANs also affect Layer 3 routing behaviors,
driving the need for technologies like LISP

11. Multi-Tenancy and Increased
Scale
• The 12-bit VLAN address space isn’t big enough
• Hybridcloud solutions means individual customers need to
be properly separated and segregated
• This drives the development of new protocols
• Virutal eXtensible Local Area Network (VXLAN)
• NetworkVirtualization using Generic Routing
Encapsulation (NVGRE)
• Stateless Transport Tunneling (STT)

12. Questions &
Answers

13. Thank You