To effectively design a virtual network infrastructure, a design architect must understand the virtual network architecture, including which features are available and how they are configured. This chapter will contain recipes that a design architect can use to design a virtual network architecture that provides the capacity and availability required to support the virtual infrastructure.

The logical network design includes calculating the network capacity (or bandwidth) required to support the virtual machines and determining the capacity that's required to support VMware technologies, such as vMotion and Fault Tolerance. If IP-based storage connectivity is required, the design must account for the networking that's necessary to support storage traffic, as well:

In this chapter, we will discuss the different virtual network switch technologies that are available in vSphere, and the different features that are available in each. This chapter will also cover how load balancing and teaming are used to improve network utilization efficiency and to increase availability. Network capacity resource management with traffic shaping, jumbo frames, and network I/O control will also be covered.

In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:

• Determining network bandwidth requirements
• Standard or distributed virtual switches
• Providing network availability
• Network resource management
• Using private VLANs
• IP storage network design considerations
• Enabling jumbo frames
• Designing for VMkernel services
• Creating custom TCP/IP stacks
• vMotion network design considerations
• Using 10 GbE Converged Network Adapters
• IPv6 in a vSphere design
• Remote Direct Memory Access options