With the evolution of mass server virtualization, IT teams have found the need to virtualize both network and storage infrastructure to better support dynamic provisioning and virtual machine (VM) migration. While server hypervisors already offer some storage and network virtualization features, they don't necessarily go deep enough. Enter storage and network hypervisors.

In this series of tips, we explain both the storage and network hypervisor, as well as other network virtualization and vSphere networking tools that enable a more flexible architecture and lend themselves to deeper server virtualization management.

Do we need a network hypervisor and full network virtualization?

As wide-scale server virtualization, automated provisioning and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) models become more prominent in the enterprise, traditional networks are struggling to keep up with the demands and complexities these technologies entail. A network hypervisor could be the solution.

Physical components that make up the network, like switches, routers and firewalls, must be virtualized in order to accommodate the growing traffic demands of server virtualization. Once these components are virtualized, engineers must be able to programmatically control the provisioning of these resources by eliminating physical network limitations. While some of these networking capabilities are in the server hypervisor, they aren't specialized enough for these needs,