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Distributed Virtual Switches

CA Virtual Assurance supports the following Distributed Virtual Switches in a vSphere environment:

CA Virtual Assurance discovers Distributed Virtual Switches in a vSphere environment and monitors its policies and properties through events. CA Virtual Assurance VM provisioning supports vNetwork Distributed Switches and Cisco Nexus 1000V Switches.

A Distributed Virtual Switch operates as a single virtual switch that spans across all hosts which are associated with that switch. A Distributed Virtual Switch represents the same switch (same name, same network policy) and port group for these hosts. These properties allow VMs to maintain a consistent network configuration as they migrate among multiple hosts.

Like a vNetwork Standard Switch, each Distributed Virtual Switch is a network hub that VMs can use. A Distributed Virtual Switch can forward traffic internally between VMs or link to an external network by connecting to physical NICs (uplink adapters).

Distributed Virtual Port Groups (dvPort Groups) are port groups associated with a Distributed Virtual Switch and specify port configuration options for each member port. dvPort Groups define how a connection is made through the Distributed Virtual Switch to the network

Distributed Virtual UpLinks (dvUpLinks) provide a level of abstraction for the physical NICs (vmnics) on the ESX or ESXi hosts. Each physical NIC is mapped to a dvUplink. The mapping from the dvPort Group to the dvUplink defines which physical NICs on ESX or ESXi hosts are used by VMs to get access to the network through the Distributed Virtual Switch.

The Cisco Nexus 1000V Switch consists of the Virtual Ethernet Module (VEM) and the Virtual Supervisor Module (VSM). On each ESX or ESXi host associated with a Cisco Nexus 1000V Switch, the VEM replaces the VMware vSwitch and runs as a module in the hypervisor kernel. The VSM controls multiple VEMs as one logical switch and runs in a VM on an ESX or ESXi host.

For further details, see the VMware vNetwork Distributed Switches documentation at http://pubs.vmware.com or the Cisco Nexus 1000V Switch documentation at http://www.cisco.com/go/1000vdocs.

Note: If you use the Cisco Nexus 1000V Switch, the VSM VM does not appear as a special VM in the CA Virtual Assurance user interface. Verify that your rules and actions that you apply to the VSM VM do not affect the Cisco Nexus 1000V Switch.

You can expand the Virtual Distributed Switch objects to see the associated portgroups and uplink groups.

More Information

Monitor Distributed Virtual Switches Through Events