The vSphere virtual switch (VDS) can be divided into two logical parts (see figure 1), namely the data plane and the management plane. The data plane performs practical operations, such as packet exchange, filtering and labeling. The management plane allows the administrator to configure different parameters of the data plane function. As for the vSphere standard switch (VSS), the data plane and the management plane appear on each standard switch. According to this design, the administrator can configure and maintain each VSS one by one.

The vSphere virtual switch has two logical parts. The data plane is where the actual operations such as packet switching, filtering and labeling are performed. The management plane allows the administrator to configure the functions of the data plane.

VDS treats virtual networks as aggregated resources. A single virtual network parameter at the host level is extracted as a part of a single huge VDS that spans multiple hosts at the data center level. According to this design, the data plane is still local to each host, but the management plane is centralized, and vCenter Server acts as the central control point for all parameter configuration and virtual network management. Each vCenter Server instance can support up to 128 VDS, and each VDS can connect up to 500 hosts.

VDS implements many concepts of configuring and managing standard switches, and changes some virtual network parameters to support extraction operations.

A DV port group is a port group related to VDS, which specifies the configuration suitable for a set of distributed virtual ports. The distributed virtual port group also defines how to establish a connection with the network through VDS. The configuration parameters of distributed virtual port groups are similar to those of port groups on standard switches, except that some advanced functions have additional options. Settings such as VLAN ID, traffic shaping parameters, port security, network card aggregation and load balancing configuration are all configured here. Each VDS supports at most 10000 static port groups.

Distributed virtual uplinks (dvUplinks) is a new concept introduced by VDS. Distributed virtual uplinks provide a level of abstraction for the physical network cards (vmnics) on each host. Network card aggregation, load balancing and failover strategies on distributed virtual port groups are all applied to distributed virtual uplinks, not physical network cards on a single host. When a host is added to VDS, each physical network card on the host is mapped to a distributed virtual uplink, thus achieving the consistency of network card aggregation and failover, regardless of the allocation of physical network cards.