The adoption of virtualization has led to a paradigm shift in the data center. At the core of these changes is the fact that a single host server running multiple virtual machines (VMs) can now represent the equivalent of multiple physical servers. Each of the previously independent physical servers are now manifested as separate virtual machines; traffic among them and with the outside world is now managed and coordinated by a virtual switch. This white paper discusses what needs to change in the way we think about networking when using VMware vSphere and ESX / ESXi 4.0. Learn more about QoS, Intel VT-c with VMDq and SR-IOV, 10Gb Ethernet, and the impact of IP Storage like iSCSI and NAS.
