N1010/N1000v : VMWare Vcenter - VSM (L3) on N1010 - VEM on ESX-host

Question

Hi Vishal Mehta,
I am currently busy with the rollout of a nexus1010/nexus1000v.
Current status :
1/ Nexus 1010 (primary/secondary) setup is done/ok.
2/ Add VSB’s for Nexus1000v is aswell done/ok.
3/ VSB(VSM) towards VMWare VCenter communication (show svs connections J) is aswell done/ok.
4/ VEM activation on a ESX-Host à and this is the part were I’m a bit lost (sorry for that L… ) :  how should I “understand” the VSM to VEM communication. And/or in other words : can a ESX-host (with a vswitch or distributed vswitch stay active in parallel with a VEM on that same ESX-Host ? Based on my current testing, everything points into the direction of “migrating from an existing vswitch to a VEM setup”).
[Note : I have a VSM to VEM Layer3 setup configured.]
4bis / what about the mgmt. communication between the ESX-host vswitch & the mgmt.communication between the ESC-host VEM (which is in my case layer3).
Is there a "good" one-pager available which shows the difference between VMware (distributed)vswitch vs VMware with Cisco Nexus1000v VEM. And additionally which parts can run in parallel between the VMware vcenter & an ESX-Host (when it comes to "controlling the vswitch & the nexus 1000v VEM).
Many thanks for your replies,
Best Regards,
Joost.

Answer 1

Hi Joost,
You have scored on all the initial setup steps and almost close to using VSM-VEM :)
To answer your main question – Yes a ESXi host can have multiple active Virtual Switches in parallel.
That is to say, you can have VMware’s DVS, Nexus 1000v VEM, vSwitch 1, vSwitch 2, …., vSwitch X all ON at same time.
The separation at switching level happens on basis of which VMs (via Port-Groups) use which Virtual Switch.
The uplinks (network adapters - vmnics) of host are distributed across virtual switches (CANNOT be shared)
So multiple active Virtual Switches gives you flexibility to segregate your virtual workloads across those uplinks
Now regarding the L3 mode between VSM and VEM
You can either use existing mgmt. interface (vmk0) to communicate between ESXi host (VEM) and Nexus 1000v VSM
Or you can have dedicated (separate from mgmt.) IP subnet with new VMkernel (say vmk1) for VEM-VSM communication.
Please refer below document which walks through the scenario you have implemented:
https://communities.cisco.com/docs/DOC-28631
we don’t have specific document to compare Nexus 1000v with other Distributed Virtual Switches
But few of advantages for opting Nexus 1000v are – its free, all NX-OS features, separate entity which can be owned/managed by Network team and other special features which I presented in above webcast recordings
Common deployments I have seen in field is Customers using vSwitch for mgmt. (vmk0)  and other host specific functions
And they use Nexus 1000v VEM for NX-OS for additional functionality like LACP, PVLAN, QoS, ERSPAN and Virtual Machines traffic.
Thank you!!
Regards,
Vishal