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.
(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
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 !!
Share and Care !!
Enjoy !!
