vSwitch configuration and load-balancing policy selection are major parts of a virtual infrastructure design. Selecting a load-balancing policy can have impact on the performance of the virtual machine and can introduce additional requirements at the physical network layer. Not only do I spend lots of time discussing the various options during design sessions, it is [...]

One setting most admins get caught off-guard is vSwitch Failback setting in combination with HA. If the management network vSwitch is configured with Active/Standby NICs and the HA isolation response is set to “Shutdown” VM or “Power-off” VM it is advised to set the vSwitch Failback mode to No. If left at default (Yes), all [...]

In vSphere 4.1 a new network Load Based Teaming (LBT) algorithm is available on the distributed virtual switch dvPort groups. The option “Route based on physical NIC load” takes the virtual machine network I/O load into account and tries to avoid congestion by dynamically reassigning and balancing the virtual switch port to physical NIC mappings. [...]

During the test of the Cisco Nexus 1000V the customer deleted the VSM first without removing the DVS using commands from within the VSM, ending up with an orphaned DVS. One can directly delete the DVS from the DB, but there are bunch of rows in multiple tables that need to be deleted. This is [...]