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.
|
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 !!!!