Are Distributed switches required for functionality?

[Chipperchoi]

Hello,

I apologize if this is a noob question but I have 5 ESXi host (6.7 on latest patch) running on HP DL360 Gen10 machines. 

There are about 42 VMs spread out across the 5 hosts and I am having an issue when VMs are vmotioned to another host. 

The VM itself migrates over just fine but once migrated, it will lose all network connectivity.

There was a suggestion from another site that I should be using distributed switch. 

From what I understand, while vDS offers central management, the hosts are able to communicate and function fine on Standard vSwitches that was configured automatically on the hosts when it was built.

I am trying to figure out why some VMs are just randomly losing network connectivity and the only way to get it back is to remove the network adapter from the VM and re-add a new one (VMXNET 3).

Are distributed switches absolutely required for vmotion? Or is there something else that I am just not seeing as to why guest VMs keep losing their connectivity?

Thank you

[e_espinel]

Hello.
The first thing is that for distributed Switch you need an enterprise license or equivalent.

vMotion works very well on both standard and distributed switches

.
Check the version of the VMware tools on the VMs that have the problem and if necessary upgrade to the one provided by ESXi. The VMware tools include the VMXNET3 driver (recommended driver for Windows VMs).

Verify that all the physical connections of the network cards of the servers are on a single physical switch, if possible on the Core switch.

Verify that the speed on the physical network cards matches the speed on the physical switch physical port.
auto<=>auto or 1GB<=>1GB or 10GB<=>10GB

[IRIX201110141]

There is no difference when it comes to vMotion between vSS and vDS. Also technically a vDS is a bunch of hidden vSS on ESXi. When you loose more than one ping during a vMotion you have much likely problems with the arp caches on your pSwitches.

Regards,
Joerg

[a_p_]

>>> The VM itself migrates over just fine but once migrated, it will lose all network connectivity.

To me his doesn't look like a vMotion, nor a standard vs. distributed vSwitch issue.

What you may want to verify is the network configuration, i.e.:

• that all of the physical switch ports which are connected to the vSwitch with the VM's port group are configured properly (e.g. VLAN configuration, spanning-treee, ...)
• that the virtual port groups have the correct settings (e.g. VLAN-ID, Failover&Teaming, etc.)

André

[Chipperchoi]

Ok thank you for your input. Much appreciate it. 

[jburen]

And also make sure that the naming of your port groups is exactly identical across your virtual switches.

[berndweyand]

do you have switch notification enabled ?

edit virtual switch->teaming and failover->notify switches=yes

[amansapra19]

Port Groups have to have same name and VLAN IDs configured for vMotion to work smoothly if you are using Standard Switches.