Yes

Multicast Support (IGMP v2 and v3)

Source and Destination Port IP

Additional Hashing Options

2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Yes

Source and Destination IP

Source and Destination MAC

Yes

Source MAC

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Virtual Switchport ID

Virtual Port Channels

Link Aggregation Control Protocol
(LACP)
Load Balancing Algorithms

Yes

EtherChannel

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

ESX 4.0:
vNetwork
Standard
Switch (U1)

Yes

Virtual MAC Pinning

VMware VMotion Support

Network VMware VMotion (Network
Policy)
Upstream Switch Connectivity

Yes

IEEE 802.1Q VLAN Tagging

IGMPv3 Snooping

Yes

Layer 2 Forwarding

Switching Features

Feature

ESX 3.5:
Standard
vSwitch

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

ESX 4.0:
vNetwork
Distributed
Switch (U1)

Switch Feature Comparison 1

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Nexus 1000V
VSM on VM

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

NXWS2 - 101

Nexus 1000V
VSM on
Nexus 1010

Local PVLAN enforcement

Access Control Lists (ACL)

DHCP Snooping

IP Source Guard

Dynamic ARP Inspection

Virtual Service Domain

2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Yes

VMware VMSafe compatible

Private VLANs (PVLANs)

Yes

Port Security

Security Features

Class of Service

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

ESX 4.0:
vNetwork
Standard
Switch (U1)

Quality-of-service (QoS) marking

Differentiated Services Code Point
(DSCP)
Type of Service

Traffic Management Features

Tx Rate Limiting (from virtual
machine)
Rx Rate Limiting (from virtual
machine)
iSCSI Multipathing

Feature

ESX 3.5:
Standard
vSwitch

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

ESX 4.0:
vNetwork
Distributed
Switch (U1)

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Nexus 1000V
VSM on VM

Switch Feature Comparison 2

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Nexus 1000V
VSM on
Nexus 1010

NXWS2 - 102

Yes

VI Client

Yes

VI Client

**

Yes

VI Client to
VMware vCenter
Server
Yes

**

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

ESX 4.0:
vNetwork
Distributed
Switch (U1)

Yes

Yes
VMware
vCenter and
Cisco CLI
Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Nexus 1000V
VSM on VM

2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Yes

Yes
VMware
vCenter and
Cisco CLI
Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Nexus 1000V
VSM on
Nexus 1010

** Virtual switch network syslog information is exported and included with VMware ESX Server events.

NX-OS XML API

IPv6 for Management

Configuration and management

console and interface

SNMP v3 Read/Write

Radius/TACACS+

Netflow v9

ERSPAN

Packet Capture & Analysis

**

Syslog

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Network Policy Groups

VMware port mirroring
(promiscuous)
Multi-Tier Policy Groups
(inheritance)
SPAN

CDP v1/v2

Yes

Yes

Third Party Accessible APIs

Yes

Yes

Yes

ESX 4.0:
vNetwork
Standard
Switch (U1)

VMware vCenter Support

Management Features

Feature

ESX 3.5:
Standard
vSwitch

Switch Feature Comparison 3

NXWS2 - 103