6.5.1

Table Of Contents
Notify Switches Policy
By using the notify switches policy, you can determine how the ESXi host communicates failover events.
When a physical NIC connects to the virtual switch or when traffic is rerouted to a different physical NIC in
the team, the virtual switch sends notifications over the network to update the lookup tables on physical
switches. Notifying the physical switch offers lowest latency when a failover or a migration with vSphere
vMotion occurs.
Load Balancing Algorithms Available for Virtual Switches
You can configure various load balancing algorithms on a virtual switch to determine how network traffic is
distributed between the physical NICs in a team.
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Route Based on Originating Virtual Port
The virtual switch selects uplinks based on the virtual machine port IDs on the vSphere Standard
Switch or vSphere Distributed Switch.
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Route Based on Source MAC Hash
The virtual switch selects an uplink for a virtual machine based on the virtual machine MAC address.
To calculate an uplink for a virtual machine, the virtual switch uses the virtual machine MAC address
and the number of uplinks in the NIC team.
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Route Based on IP Hash
The virtual switch selects uplinks for virtual machines based on the source and destination IP
address of each packet.
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Route Based on Physical NIC Load
Route Based on Physical NIC Load is based on Route Based on Originating Virtual Port, where the
virtual switch checks the actual load of the uplinks and takes steps to reduce it on overloaded
uplinks. Available only for vSphere Distributed Switch.
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Use Explicit Failover Order
No actual load balancing is available with this policy. The virtual switch always uses the uplink that
stands first in the list of Active adapters from the failover order and that passes failover detection
criteria. If no uplinks in the Active list are available, the virtual switch uses the uplinks from the
Standby list.
Route Based on Originating Virtual Port
The virtual switch selects uplinks based on the virtual machine port IDs on the vSphere Standard Switch
or vSphere Distributed Switch.
Route Based on Originating Virtual Portis the default load balancing method on the vSphere Standard
Switch and vSphere Distributed Switch.
vSphere Networking
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