Introduction
A VMware ESXi server cannot do much of anything worthwhile without some means of getting network traffic to and from the VMs it hosts. Fortunately, VMware realized this and has thoughtfully provided two solutions to this problem, the vSphere Standard Switch and the vSphere Distributed Switch. This chapter focuses on the former, the original recipe vSwitch that is included with every license level. Don’t let the “standard” part of the Standard Switch fool you—it includes a bunch of great features to help you shuffle traffic around your network. With that said, let’s look at what makes a VMware Standard Switch tick.