Lots of vendors say they have the answer for managing network traffic between virtual machines, but users don't seem to think there is one solid strategy.

VMware released the vCloud director, which implements switching, routing, firewalling, NAT and even DHCP servers within the VMware framework. Cisco took a stab at virtualization networking with its virtual switch, the Nexus 1000V. Other vendors are going with Virtual Ethernet Port Adapters (VEPA), which pull all the traffic out of the hypervisor and let the first-hop switch handle all the necessary aspects of bridging, VLANs, routing, QoS and security.

According to Fast Packet blogger, Ivan Pepelnjak, vCloud and Cisco's VN Tag approach are both proprietary, which limits their use, and VEPA still needs hypervisor support. These limitations make all of the above solutions “half-baked.”

Read Ivan's “