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Table Of Contents
vSphere Distributed Switch Data Flow
The data flow from the virtual machines and VMkernel adapters down to the physical network depends on
the NIC teaming and load balancing policies that are set to the distributed port groups. The data flow also
depends on the port allocation on the distributed switch.
Figure 32. NIC Teaming and Port Allocation on a vSphere Distributed Switch
For example, suppose that you create the VM network and the VMkernel network distributed port groups,
respectively with 3 and 2 distributed ports. The distributed switch allocates ports with IDs from 0 to 4 in
the order that you create the distributed port groups. Next, you associate Host 1 and Host 2 with the
distributed switch. The distributed switch allocates ports for every physical NIC on the hosts, as the
numbering of the ports continues from 5 in the order that you add the hosts. To provide network
connectivity on each host, you map vmnic0 to Uplink 1, vmnic1 to Uplink 2, and vmnic2 to Uplink 3.
To provide connectivity to virtual machines and to accommodate VMkernel traffic, you configure teaming
and failover to the VM network and to the VMkernel network port groups. Uplink 1 and Uplink 2 handle
the traffic for the VM network port group, and Uplink 3 handles the traffic for the VMkernel network port
group.
vSphere Networking
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