Virtual Switch (VSwitch)

A virtual switch is meant to provide a mechanism to reduce the complexity of network configuration. This is achieved by reducing the number of switches that need to be managed after taking the network size, data packets and architecture into account. Because a virtual switch is intelligent, it can also ensure the integrity of the virtual machine's profile, which includes network and security settings. This proves a big help to network administrators as moving virtual machines across physical hosts can be time-consuming and pose security risks.

A virtual switch has a few key advantages:

• Helps in easy deployment and migration of virtual servers
• Allows network administrators to manage virtual switch deployed through a hypervisor
• Compared to a physical switch, it's easy to roll out new functionality, which can be hardware or firmware related.