Introduction
You can find more information about Distributed Virtual Switch (DVS) in official documentation:
http://www.vmware.com/products/vnetwork-distributed-switch/
http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pages/vsp_pubs_esx40_u1_vc40_u1.html
And also on:
http://download3.vmware.com/vdcos/demos/DVS_Demo_800x600.html
http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vsphere/networking?view=overview
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010557 - Configuring vNetwork Distributed Switch using vCenter
Note that the Enterprise Plus Edition (and also vCenter Server) is required to use DVS.
VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch and vSphere:
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Features
Take a look at this table for the additional features and comparison between standard vSwitch and vDS:
http://www.vmware.com/products/vnetwork-distributed-switch/features.html
VMware ESX 3.5 vSwitch | VMware vSphere vSwitch | VMware vSphere DVS | Cisco Nexus 1000V | |
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Switching Features | ||||
L2 Forwarding |
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VLAN Segmentation |
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IEEE 802.1Q VLAN Trunking |
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Network VMotion (Port state follows VM) |
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VM Tx Rate Limiting |
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VM Rx Rate Limiting |
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NIC Teaming/Port Channels |
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LACP Etherchannel |
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Multicast Support |
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Security Features | ||||
Private VLAN |
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Access Control List |
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Cisco Port Security |
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VMware Port Security |
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VMSafe Compatibility |
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Management Features | ||||
Associate VMs to Network |
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Network Monitoring |
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Network Provisioning |
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Nexus 1000V VSM Support -Standard IOS CLI -Network Provisioning -XML API |
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Port Profile |
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Port Profile Inheritance |
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SPAN |
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VMware Port Mirroring (Promiscuous) |
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ERSPAN - Port Mirror Across L3 Boundaries |
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Netflow v5 |
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Netflow v9 |
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SNMP v3 RW |
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CDP v1/v2 |
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Export to Syslog Server |
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System Features | ||||
Active/Standby Supervisor for Control Plane HA |
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SSH/Telnet |
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VMware Remote CLI |
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*Experimental Support
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Migrating from vSwitch to DVS
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010612 - Migrating virtual machines between vSwitch or PortGroups to vDS or dvPortgroups
DVS provides more than just having to configure your portgroups once ... heck this can be accomplished with host profiles.
