Introduction

Networking, by its very nature, is insecure by default. The idea was and remains to move information between connected endpoints in the most efficient way through the seven layers of the OSI stack. We've looked at different facets of the vSphere infrastructure and how to secure them against intrusion and administration threats. Improper virtual network design and implementation is a very real threat with high probability when it comes to virtual switch configurations.

One of the primary reasons that contribute to the high likelihood of misconfiguration is the lack of collaboration between the virtual environment administrators and the physical network administrators. While virtual environment administrators tend to understand the virtualizing hardware very well, many come from a Windows administration background as opposed to an in-depth networking background.

Physical versus virtual networking teams are often different and don't work with each other. The details are...