VCP6-DCV Exam Cram Notes: Section 2 of 10

Section 2 - Configure and Administer Advanced vSphere 6.x Networking

vSphere Distributed Switch must be at version 6.0 to support vSphere Network I/O Control 3 (NIOC3)

Objective 2.1 - Configure Advanced Policies/Features and Verify Network Virtualization Implementation

vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS):
- requires Enterprise licensing from VMware
- allows for Private VLANs
- can traffic shape inbound traffic as well as outbound (vSS is only outbound)
- supports port mirroring and Netflow
- LLDP is supported
- supports Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP)
- support for Network I/O Control (NIOC)

Listed Maximums for vDS:
4096 - Total virtual network ports per host
1016 - Maximum active ports per host
10’000 - Static/Dynamic port groups per distributed switch
1016 - Ephemeral port groups per distributed switch
60’000 - ports per distributed switch
128 - Distributed switches per vCenter
16 - Distributed switches per host
64 - LACP LAGs per host
1’000 - Hosts per distributed switch
64 - NIOC resource pools per vDS
64 - Link aggregate groups per vDS

Note 1: vDS latest version is 6.0.0. You can always upgrade to a later version but can never downgrade.
Note 2: Removing ESXi host from a vDS: All VMs and VMkernel ports associated with the host you are removing must be removed from the vDS!

vDS dvPort group ‘Edit Settings’ sections that can be configured:
- General
- Advanced
- Security
- Traffic shaping
- VLAN
- Teaming and failover
-- Active uplinks, Standby uplinks, Unused uplinks
- Monitoring
- Traffic filtering and marking
- Miscellaneous

Note: Delete dvPort group from vDS: If any ports are assigned on the dvPort group, you will not be able to delete it.

Configure LACP on Uplink portgroups on vDS:
- The Link Aggregation Group (LAG) must have a minimum of 2 ports
- The number of physical uplinks in the LAG must match the number of physical ports in the LACP port channel on the physical switch
- The hashing algorithm on the LAG must match the hashing algorithm on the LACP port channel on the physical switch

Note: LAG modes are Active or Passive.
Note: In order to use PVLANs (Private VLANs) the upstream physical switch(s) must support PVLANs as well.

Policy exceptions for distributed port groups are:
- Promiscuous Mode
- MAC Address Changes
- Forged Transmit

dvPort group blocking policies -> dropdown “Block all ports” = YES - will STOP all VM traffic on the dvPort group!

Teaming and failover” options for Load Balancing:
- Route based on originating port ID
- Route based on IP hash*
- Route based on source MAC hash*
- Use explicit failover (1st uplink listed under “Active uplinks”)
- Route based on physical NIC load

*The physical uplinks must be in a port channel on the physical switch.

Notify switches policy:
- YES (to notify upstream physical switches to update its lookup tables)
- NO (use case: running Microsoft NLB in unicast mode)

Failback policy:
- YES (failback when failed physical adapter comes back online)
- NO

Failover order:
- Active uplinks
- Standby uplinks
- Unused uplinks

dvPort Configure VLAN/PVLAN settings - VLAN type:
- None
- VLAN
- VLAN Trunking
- Private VLAN

Traffic shaping policies:
- Traffic shaping is configured per dvPort group and not at the distributed switch level
- Traffic shaping can be applied both ingress and egress (vSS is egress only)
- 4 settings for Ingress/Egress:
-- Status: Enabled or Disabled
-- Average Bandwidth (defined in Kbits/sec)
-- Peak Bandwidth (defined in Kbits/sec)
-- Burst Size (defined in Kbytes/sec)

TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO) support for a VM:
- TSO is supported for VMkernel adapters and virtual machines
- TSO is enabled by default for VMXNET2 and VMXNET3 network adapters
- TSO needs to be enabled in Linux/Windows virtual machine
-- Linux: ethtool -K ethY tso on
-- Windows: Enable Large Send Offload V2 and restart VM

Jumbo Frames MTU is 9000.

9000 - is the max MTU size (in bytes) that an administrator can set on a virtual switch
9000 - is the maximum supported Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) value on a vSphere Distributed Switch.

VLAN tagging options:
- Virtual Switch Tagging (VST)
- External Switch Tagging (EST)
- Virtual Guest Tagging (VGT)

Two VLAN Policies available in vSphere 6.x Distributed Port Groups...
... VLAN
... Private VLAN

Objective 2.2 - Configure Network I/O Control (NIOC)

Network I/O Control requirements:
- NIOC v2 gives the ability to reserve network resources for a VM on the physical adapter
- NIOC v3 gives the ability to reserve network resources for a VM across the switch
- NIOC v3 includes resource management for system traffic (such as FT)
- NIOC v3 can only run on vDS version 6.0 with ESXi version 6.0
- SR-IOV isn’t available on VMs using NIOC v3
- NIOC requires Enterprise+ licensing

Network I/O Control capabilities:
- Can do IEEE 802.1p tagging on outbound packets
- Utilizes load-based teaming uplinks on a particular vDS
- Can do traffic isolation
- Can enforce traffic bandwidth limits across uplinks on the vDS
- Can do network partitioning using a Shares mechanism
- Separates traffic into network resource pools.

Pre-defined NIOC network resource pools:
- iSCSI, NFS, Virtual machine traffic, vMotion, vSphere Replication, FT Logging, Management traffic

Monitor NIOC: vSphere Web client -> Networking -> Resource Allocation
-> System traffic (bandwidth) <or> Network resource pools (quota)

Objective 2.3 - Configure vSS and vDS Policies

Common Policies that exist within vSS and vDS:
- Security: Policy exceptions: Promiscous Mode, MAC Address Changes, Forged Transmits...
- Traffic Shaping (vSS outbound only, vDS inbound and outbound): Policy exceptions: Average Bandwidth (Kbits/sec), Peak Bandwidth (Kbits/sec), Burst Size (kbytes/sec)...
- Teaming and Failover: Policies: Load Balancing, Network Failure Detection, Notify Switches, Failover and Failback...

Policies that apply to the vDS only: NIOC, Port Mirroring, Net Flow, Private VLANs...

Note: Most of these policies live on the dvPort groups themselves.

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