What is Vswitch and how it is different from physical switch?

Question

For me both provides the functionality of networking. Now I can want to know what properties are common in both the solutions and what are different set of features both have individually ?

Answer 1

I haven't explored much on this area but sharing my basic understanding.

Physical Switch : When we need to enable communication among multiple devices (PCs), each PC is connected to switch. Switch works at the Layer-2 protocol so as soon as PCs are connected to switch learn about the mapping of MAC and IP address. Physical switch has limitation on # of port.

vSwitch: It is used when multiple Virtual machine wants to communicate to each other. There are unlimited number of ports on vSwitch. By using vSwitch, private and as well public network can be created. It is possible to make one interface of VM as part private network and another interface with public network. For example: VM running web server, web server will use one interface to communicate with web client (sitting outside the network) while another interface it uses to interact with VM running database. Creation of vSwitch is part of Hyper-Visor.

Comments

using physical switch also we can create private and public network. How vswitch will be different from physical switch in terms of public and private network?