Virtual machine workloads share not just compute and storage resources on an ESXi server, but the physical network interfaces as well. There are physical limits on how well these network interfaces can serve the bandwidth needs of the virtual machines. More importantly, not every virtual machine has the same network workload characteristics. Therefore, it becomes extremely critical for the virtual switches to have network load distribution, load balancing, and failover capabilities.

Let's begin by comparing the teaming and failover capabilities of both switch types:

Let's go over the various teaming and failover methods, one by one.