I have been asked by lot of people during my training sessions about the difference’s between standard and distributed switch. I decided it’s the time to post the series of posts about distributed switch to help the readers to learn about distributed switch. In this post, I have explained the major differences about standard and distributed switch.
VS
Features | Standard Switch | Distributed Switch |
Management | Standard switch needs to managed at each individual host level | Provides centralized management and monitoring of the network configuration of all the ESXi hosts that are associated with the dvswitch. |
Licensing | Standard Switch is available for all Licensing Edition | Distributed switch is only available for enterprise edition of licensing |
Creation & configuration | Standard switch can be created and configured at ESX/ESXi host level | Distributed switch can be created and configured at the vCenter server level |
Layer 2 Switch | Yes, can forward Layer 2 frames | Yes, can forward Layer 2 frames |
VLAN segmentation | Yes | Yes |
802.1Q tagging | Can use and understand 802.1q VLAN tagging | Can use and understand 802.1q VLAN tagging |
NIC teaming | Yes, can utilize multiple uplink to form NIC teaming | Yes, can utilize multiple uplink to form NIC teaming |
Outbound Traffic Shaping | Can be achieved using standard switch | Can be achieved using distributed switch |
Inbound Traffic Shaping | Not available as part of standard switches | Only possible at distributed switch |
VM port blocking | Not available as part of standard switches | Only possible at distributed switch |
Private VLAN | Not available | PVLAN can be created as part of dvswitch. 3 types of PVLAN(Promiscuous, Community and Isolated) |
Load based Teaming | Not available | Can be achieved using distributed switch |
Network vMotion | Not available | Can be achieved using distributed switch |
Per Port policy setting | Policy can be applied at switch and port group | Policy can be applied at switch, port group and even per port level |
NetFlow | Not available | Yes |
Port Mirroring | Not available | Yes |
I hope this is informative for you. Thanks for reading !!!!