Best Practice Guides
VMware Virtual Networking Concepts
VMware Infrastructure 3 provides a rich set of networking capabilities that integrate well with sophisticated enterprise networks. This guide will give you a clearer understanding of the basic design of the networking capabilities in VMware Infrastructure 3 and how that design affects deployment in the data center.
iSCSI Design Considerations and Deployment Guide
This paper is intended to help you understand the design considerations and deployment options for deploying VMware Infrastructure 3 using iSCSI storage. The first section provides an overview of iSCSI terminology, benefits, and limitations. The second section provides a high-level overview of the VMware iSCSI implementation using either a software initiator or a hardware initiator. The third section provides a detailed set of deployment steps covering both software and hardware initiator options.
Round-Robin Load Balancing
VMware ESX 3.5 and VMware ESXi 3.5 enhance VMware ESX native multipathing by providing experimental support for round‐robin load balancing. This technical note explains how round‐robin load balancing works and how to set it.
Additional Resources
Implementing Microsoft Network Load Balancing (NLB) in a Virtualized Environment
Network Load Balancing (NLB) is a feature of recent Microsoft Windows Server operating systems used to improve the scalability and availability of Internet server applications. This paper provides instructions for supporting NLB in unicast or multicast mode on VMware ESX.
VMware Infrastructure 3 in a Cisco Network Environment
VMware has collaborated with Cisco to produce a guide for deploying VMware Infrastucture 3 with Cisco switches. This guide covers the physical and virtual data network and storage network deployment considerations for ESX Server with suggested topologies and designs.
Multi-NIC Networking Performance in ESX 3.0.1 and XenEnterprise 3.2.0
In this paper, we characterize the virtualization overheads of virtual machines by measuring the performance under heavy networking in a single-processor virtual machine.
Download the Performance Comparison
Configuring and Troubleshooting N-Port ID Virtualization
This technical note provides additional details about certain specific NPIV configurations and information on diagnostic techniques that may be helpful as you configure NPIV. It also includes information to help you understand error messages that may appear as you are working with NPIV in a VMware Infrastructure environment.
Enabling NetFlow on Virtual Switches
NetFlow is a general networking tool with multiple uses, including network monitoring and profiling, billing, intrusion detection and prevention, networking forensics, and SOX compliance. This technical notes outlines how VMware ESX provides experimental support for enabling NetFlow on virtual switches to gain visibility into virtual machine network traffic.
Take the Next Step
Learn more about utilizing virtual network components and configuring virtual networks or learn more about the networking capabilities of VMware Infrastructure 3.
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