vSphere VSS & VDS - Cisco Nexus1000v Feature Comparison

I have been asked or requested, so many times before, while talking to the end user or with some one about the features offered by VMware VSS (Virtual Standard Switch), VDS (VMware Distributed Switch) and Cisco Nexus 1000v VDS and I was thinking to gather as much information as I could and blog about it. So here it is.

I believe that any advanced user, working with VMware environment for few years, is aware of the fact that Nexus 1000v is Cisco's product and it will appear as a VDS inside the vSphere GUI. So by looking at the GUI if the naming convention is not used properly for the VDS than you may interpret as a regular VMware VDS so to avoid the confusion one can check the "Summary" Tab of the VDS to verify the vendor of that VDS and also the version of that VDS.

IBM has released Nexus 5000 VDS about which I have not heard much discussion till date. So in this comparison I am not including IBM VDS.

Have a look at the following Table, which I have tried including possibly every feature offered by the VMware VSS, VMware VDS and Nexus VDS. If I miss something then do leave the comment or get in touch with me and I will update the article.

Feature	VMware vSphere 4.x VSS	VMware vSphere 5.5 VDS	Cisco Nexus 1000V 4.2 (1)-SV2(2.2)
Switching Features
Layer 2 Forwarding	YES	YES	YES
IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging	YES	YES	YES
Multicast Support (IGMP V2 and V3 support)	YES	YES	YES
IGMP V3 Snooping	-	-	YES
VMware vMotion	YES	YES	YES
Network VMware vMotion	-	YES	YES
Multi-Nic vMotion Support	-	YES	YES
Physical Switch Connectivity
Virtual Mac Pinning	YES	YES	YES
EtherChannel	YES	YES	YES
Virtual Port Channels	-	-	YES
Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP)	-	YES	YES
Static LAG	-	YES	YES
Dynamic LAG	-	YES	YES
Load – Balancing Algorithms
Virtual Port ID	YES	YES	YES
Source MAC Address	YES	YES	YES
Source and destination IP Address	YES	YES	YES
Source MAC Address	-	YES	YES
Additional hashing Options	-	YES	YES
Load Based Teaming	-	YES	-
Source and Destination port IP	-	YES	YES
Advanced Port channel	-	YES	YES
IP Hash	YES	YES	YES
Traffic Management Features
Transmit-rate (from Virtual Machine) limiting	YES	YES	YES
Receive-rate (to Virtual Machine) limiting	-	YES	YES
ISCSI Mutipathing	YES	YES	YES
Unicast Flooding Control	-	YES	YES
Quality-of-Service (QoS) marking
Differentiated Serviecs Code Point (DSCP)	-	YES	YES
Type of Service	-	-	YES
Class of Service	-	YES	YES
802.1Q	-	YES	YES
Network IO control (NIOC)	-	YES	YES
Transmit-rate (from Virtual Machine) limiting	YES	YES	YES
Receive-rate (to a Virtual Machine) limiting	-	YES	YES
802.1p	-	YES	YES

Security Features
Port Security	YES	YES	YES
VMware VMsafe Compatible	YES	YES	YES
Private VLANs (PVLANs) 512	-	YES (no limit)	YES(512)
Local PVLAN enforcement	-	YES	YES
PVLAN with Promiscuous Trunk	-	YES	YES
Access Control List (ACLs)	-	YES	YES
Virtual Service Domain	-	-	YES
DHCP Snooping	-	-	YES
IP source Guard	-	-	YES
Dynamic ARP Inspection	-	-	YES
MAC ACL	-	YES	YES
VXLAN	-	YES (no limit)	YES (2048)

Management Features
VMware vCenter Support	YES	YES	YES
VMware vCloud Director Support	YES	YES	YES
vCloud Director Automation Center support	YES	YES	YES
RESTful API	YES	YES	YES
Third-party-Accessible APIs	YES	YES	YES
Network Policy Groups	YES	YES	YES
Multitier Policy Groups	-	-	YES
Packet Capture and Analysis	-	YES	YES
RADIUS and TACACS+	-	-	YES
LLDP	-	YES	-
Network CLI	-	-	YES
Server CLI	YES	YES	-
Configuration and Management Console Interface	vSphere Client	vSphere Web Client/vSphere Client	vCenter and Cisco CLI
Graphical UI	YES	YES	-
Config Backup and Restore	-	YES	YES
Network Rollback and Recovery	-	YES	-
IPv6 for Management	YES	YES	YES
Monitoring and Troubleshooting
VMware Port Mirroring (promiscuous)	YES	YES	YES
Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN)	-	YES	YES
Encapsulated Remote SPAN (ERSPAN)	-	YES	YES
NetFlow ver. 9	-	-	YES
NetFlow ver. 10 (Ipv6, VXLAN flows)	-	YES	-
Network Health Check	-	YES	-

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) V3 Read and Write (V1,V2C)	-	YES	YES
Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) v1 and v2	YES	YES	YES
Syslog *	YES	YES	YES
ACL Logging	-	YES	YES
SNMP ACLs	-	-	YES
Network Virtualization
VXLAN support with Multicast	-	YES	YES
VXLAN support without Multicast	-	-	YES
ARP suppression for VXLAN	-	-	YES
L3 Gateway for NV	-	YES	YES
Site-to-Site IPSec VPN	-	YES	YES
Remote Access SSL VPN	-	YES	-
Scalability
Hosts per Switch	500	500	128
Switches per management system (VC)	128	128	32
VXLAN segments	-	10000 (VCNS)	2048
VLAN (no vxlan)	4096	4096	2048
Port Groups/Profiles per Switch	4096	10000	2048
Virtual Ports per host	4096	4096	300
Virtual Ports per Switch	10000	60000	4096
Max Active Virtual ports per Host	1016	1016	300
Max MAC Addresses per Host	No limit	No limit	32000

(NOTE: Above Table is updated for VDS 5.5 so some features which are not shown as supported on VDS 5.5 are fully supported for VDS with NSX so please verify the same.)

* Syslog information is exported and included with VMware ESX/ESXi server events

So you can select the option depending on the features you need. Both VMware and Cisco VDS requires Enterprise + License. Now if you see that I have not included the column for VMware VDS 4.1. The reason behind it, as most of the features available with VDS 5.5 and there are some more features offered with the latest version of VDS so I encourage the reader to use the latest version anyway. Even the Cisco Nexus VDS version is 4.2 (1) - SV2(2.2) which is the latest one.

For configuration of VDS you can refer the online documentation available on www.vmware.com and for Cisco Nexus 1000v VDS you can refer the documentation page here.

I will update the Sheet with NSX 6.0.5 once I get some time so please be waited till then and DO NOT leave the comment for the requesting the same Update :-) but I appreciate any Feedback or comments regarding any features (if missed) or needs an update to the above Table.

Share and Care !!

Enjoy !!