Introduction

Networking is the backbone of any infrastructure, be it virtual or physical. It enables connections between various infrastructure components. When it comes to traditional server-side networking components, we often talk about one or more physical adapters cabled to a physical switch. But things would slightly change when you install a hypervisor on a server and run a virtual machine atop. So why and what should change?

Firstly, now that we create virtual machines on the hypervisor, each of the virtual machines would need a network identity to enable it to become part of a network. Therefore, we create vNICs on the virtual machine that will appear as a network adapter to the guest operating system (Windows/Linux) that runs inside the virtual machine.

Now that we have taken care of the network connection for the virtual machine, the second hurdle is to let the virtual machines communicate over the network. On a server, since there would a limited number of physical NICs, it is...