Comparing vNetwork Standard Switch with vNetwork Distributed Switch

These features are available with both types of virtual switches:

• Can forward L2 frames
• Can segment traffic into VLANs
• Can use and understand 802.1q VLAN encapsulation
• Can have more than one uplink (NIC Teaming)
• Can have traffic shaping for the outbound (TX) traffic

These features are available only with a Distributed Switch:

• Can shape inbound (RX) traffic
• Has a central unified management interface through vCenter Server
• Supports Private VLANs (PVLANs)
• Provides potential customization of Data and Control Planes

vSphere 6.0 provides these improvements to Distributed Switch functionality:

• Network IO Control – New support for per virtual machine Distributed vSwitch bandwidth reservations to guarantee isolation and enforce limits on bandwidth.
• Multicast Snooping - Supports IGMP snooping for IPv4 packet and MLD snooping for IPv6 packets in VDS. Improves performance and scale with multicast traffic.
• Multiple TCP/IP Stack for vMotion - Allows vMotion traffic a dedicated networking stack. Simplifies IP address management with a dedicated default gateway for vMotion traffic.