In a highly virtualized environment, seamless network connectivity is as critical as compute and storage. Enter the VMware vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) — a high-performance, scalable network solution that simplifies management and optimizes traffic across multiple hosts.
What Is a vSphere Distributed Switch?
Unlike a Standard Switch (VSS), which is configured separately on each ESXi host, a Distributed Switch acts as a single virtual switch that spans multiple hosts, centralizing network configuration and monitoring. It’s designed for enterprise-grade environments that demand consistency, automation, and advanced features.
Key Features of VDS
- Centralized Management
Define network configurations once in vCenter and apply them across all participating ESXi hosts. - Port Group Consistency
Ensures uniform policies (VLANs, NIC teaming, security) across hosts. - Advanced Monitoring
Includes NetFlow, port mirroring, and health checks — ideal for troubleshooting and performance analysis. - Load Balancing & Failover
Supports multiple teaming policies (e.g. LACP) to ensure high availability and optimal traffic distribution. - Network I/O Control (NIOC)
Prioritize traffic by allocating bandwidth shares to different traffic types like vMotion, Management, or VM data. - Backing by NIC Hardware
Enables support for SR-IOV, LLDP, and other physical enhancements.
VDS vs VSS: Why Go Distributed?
| Feature | Standard Switch (VSS) | Distributed Switch (VDS) |
|---|---|---|
| Configuration Scope | Per-host | Centralized across hosts |
| Management Interface | ESXi host UI only | Managed via vCenter Server |
| Monitoring Features | Basic | Advanced (NetFlow, mirroring) |
| Template Consistency | Manual replication | Automated across hosts |
| Ideal For | Small setups or dev labs | Enterprise-scale deployments |
While VSS is simpler and perfect for smaller setups or test environments, VDS is built for scale, uniformity, and control — especially crucial when managing dozens or hundreds of VMs across clusters.
Licensing Consideration
VDS is included with vSphere Enterprise Plus and vCloud Suite editions. It’s a premium feature, so ensure your licensing meets the requirements before planning a rollout.
Deployment Tips
- Always plan VLAN and teaming policies before deploying.
- Use Host Profiles to simplify VDS configuration across new hosts.
- When migrating from VSS to VDS, validate connectivity using test VMs to avoid downtime.
- Monitor performance regularly using tools like vRealize Network Insight.
Creating VMware vSphere Distributed Virtual Switch
In this VMware vSphere 8 Nested Home Lab series so far we have created two VMware ESXi host virtual machines with total 10 NICs (VMnic0 to VMnic9) added to each of them. We have configured two standard switches so far. One for Management networks with VMnic0 and VMnic1. Second for iSCSI and NFS Storage connectivity with VMnic2 and VMnic3.
In this article we will be configuring three vSphere Distributed Switches for the network zones WEB/DMZ, APP/DB and Client as depicted in our home lab network topology below. We will be using VMnic4 and VMnic5 for WEB/DMZ, VMnic6 and VMnic7 for APP/DB and VMnic8 and VMnic9 for Client vSphere Distributed Switches.
Connect to the vCenter server https://vcenter01.virtshinobi.local/ui and login using the SSO Admin user credentials.
Click on the Networking tab and right click Datacenter-01. Navigate to Distributed Switch and click on New Distributed Switch.
Enter the name as DSwitch-WEB-DMZ and click Next.
Select the version of the Distributed Virtual Switch to be configured and click Next. If you have an existing ESXi version 7 or 8 hosts you can select the previous versions. Since this is a completely new environment we will be selecting latest version 8.0.3 as of this writing.
Change the Number of uplinks from 4 to 2, leave the Create a default port group option selected and enter the name for the port group as DPortGroup-WEB-DMZ. Click Next to continue.
On the Ready to Complete page review the settings and click Finish to create the distributed vSwitch.
The vSphere Distributed Virtual Switch will be created. We can see that the number of hosts associated with this Distributed virtual switch is showing as 0.
Next we will add the ESXi hosts to the Distributed virtual switch. Select the virtual switch DSwitch-WEB-DMZ and select Add and Manage Hosts from the Actions menu.
Select Add hosts and click Next.
Select the two ESXi hosts and click Next.
As can be seen below VMnic0 to VMnic3 are already associated with the 2 switches. Those are the standard virtual switches created for Management/vMotion and Storage networks respectively. We will be using VMnic4 and VMnic5 for this Distributed virtual switch.
Click the drop down menu against VMnic4 and select uplink1 as shown below.
Similarly click the drop down menu against VMnic5 and select uplink2 and click Next to continue.
Under Manage VMkernel Adapters leave the defaults and click Next.
One can migrate virtual machines connected to the Standard virtual switch to the port groups on this Distributed virtual switch. Since we do not have any virtual machines, we will just click Next to continue.
On the Ready to Complete page, review the summary and click Finish to add the two ESXi servers to the Distributed Virtual Switch DSwitch-WEB-DMZ.
As you can see below the number of hosts associated with this Distributed Virtual Switch is showing as 2 now instead of 0.
Navigate to the Clusters view and select the ESXi host esxi01.virtshinobi.local. Click on Configure tab and select Virtual Switches from the Networking section. You can see the Distributed Virtual Switch DSwitch-WEB-DMZ and VMnic4 and VMnic5 associated with the two uplinks.
Follow the above steps to create two more Distributed Virtual Switches for APP/DB and Client network zones and associate VMnic6 and VMnic7 with APP/DB and VMnic8 and VMnic9 with Client Distributed Virtual Switch respectively.
