HP FlexFabric Virtual Switch 5900v Installation Guide

1
Overview
The HP FlexFabric Virtual Switch 5900v (HP 5900v) provides virtual switching in virtualized environments
such as data centers. The virtual switch runs on top of the VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus Edition, and
works seamlessly with the vCenter Server and VMware ESXi hosts (physical servers that run ESXi). You
can use the HP 5900v virtual switch in place of the VMware virtual switch to provide enhanced
distributed virtual switching capabilities.
Benefits
The HP 5900v provides the following benefits:
• VM traffic visibility and consistent policy enforcement—Support for EVB enables the switch to
monitor all VM traffic, including the traffic between VMs and the traffic between VMs and the
outside network. This visibility makes it possible for the switch to implement consistent policies on all
VM traffic and transfer the network states for a VM automatically after VM migration.
• Investment protection—The virtual switch does not have special requirement for ESXi hosts. You can
install the virtual switch on existing ESXi hosts.
• Easy management—The switch provides GUIs for you to configure the virtual switch. Separation of
the network and host management interfaces divides the job responsibilities clearly between the
network and host administrators. This clear-cut division helps decrease the complexity of IT
management.
Architecture
The virtual switch includes the following components:
• VCE—Virtual control engine, the control plane of the virtual switch. You can use the Open
Virtualization Format (OVF) deployment function of the vCenter Server to install the VCE on an ESXi
host. A VCE controls one or multiple VFEs.
• VFE—Virtual forwarding engine, the data plane that implements traffic forwarding for the virtual
ports. After receiving a packet, the VFE searches for the destination port. If no port is matched, it
forwards the data to the VCE, which determines the forwarding policy and forwarding port. VFEs
deployed on multiple ESXi hosts form a virtual distributed switch (VDS). When a VM migrates, the
network policies on the virtual NIC can be synchronized to all the VMware ESXi hosts.
• VMware plug-in—A third-party management interface that the virtual switch customizes for
VMware. It is automatically installed on the VMware vCenter Server after the VCE is installed. It is
displayed on the VMware vSphere Client as a configuration tab. You can manage and configure
VFEs through the configuration items in the configuration tab.
Table 1 lists the V
CE and VFE components available for the virtual switch.