Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Deployment Manual page 5

Deployment Guide
standard device drivers for these vNICs. Alternatively, the VMware vmxnet interface type can be used; this interface
type requires VMware drivers on the guest OS.
Hosts running VMware ESX have a virtual management port called vswif, sometimes referred to as the service
console interface. This interface is used for communication with VMware vCenter Server, to manage the box directly
with the VMware vSphere Client, or to use Secure Shell (SSH) to log in to the host's command-line interface (CLI).
VMware ESXi hosts do not use vswif interfaces due to their lack of a service console OS.
Each host also has one or more virtual ports called virtual machine kernel NICs (vmknics). These are used by
VMware ESX for Small Computer Systems Interface over IP (iSCSI) and Network File System (NFS) access, as well
as by VMware VMotion. On a VMware ESXi system, a vmknic is also used for communication with VMware vCenter
Server.
The physical NICs on an VMware ESX host, called virtual machine NICs (VMNICs), are used as uplinks to the
physical network infrastructure.
The virtual and physical NICs are all tied together by virtual switches. VMware provides two types of virtual switches.
The standard vSwitch is individually created for each host. VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDSs) provides a
consistent virtual switch across a set of physical hosts. The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series is implemented as a type of
vDS.
Each vNIC is connected to a standard vSwitch or vDS through a port group. Each port group belongs to a specific
vSwitch or vDS and specifies a VLAN or set of VLANs that a VMNIC, vswif, or vmknic will use. The port group
specifies other network attributes such as rate limiting and port security. Virtual machines are assigned to port groups
during the virtual machine creation process or by editing the virtual machine properties later (Figure 1).
Figure 1. VMware vSwitch Network Configuration
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