Virtual Server Awareness Products are Being Introduced to the Network Infrastructure

A challenge when supporting a virtual server environment is created around the visibility from the network to the machines. The traditional switches and routers only see the physical hardware and are typically unaware of the Virtual Servers. There are three issues the switches and routers have as a result:

1. No knowledge of communications between two virtual machines (VMs) on the same server.

2. No knowledge of a VMs moving from one server to another using apps such as VMotion.

3. Higher density of activity on physical servers due to multiple VMs.

This is fine, however it should be taken into consideration when designing the switching and routing infrastructure and it can cause challenges when you are trying to trouble shoot a problem on the network.

Yesterday I posted an article on third party products supporting virtualization. Cisco's Nexus 1000v is one of these third party virtualization products used to address the visibility to virtual servers.

Here is Han Yang of Cisco explaining the product in a video:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9902/index.html