This June 2010 White Paper elaborates on HP perspective on networking in virtualized environments. With less than 6 pages of text it is not very deep, but since HP is the most credible player pushing the integration of data center technology silos (servers, networking, storage) through virtualization this document is a must read.

This 2009 White Paper describers Cisco's proprietary VN-Link technology. Given that it is closely integrated with VMware, the dominant virtualization player in enterprises, it must be clearly understood. While VN-Link is rarely implemented in practice and virtualization that requires specific hardware is conceptually doubtful, it is at the forefront of the discussion and therefore a must-read.

This August 2010 Document contains a Reference Architecture – Based Design for implementing Citrix XenDesktop on Cisco UCS, Citrix XenServer, and NetApp Storage. Given that desktop virtualization is a key area of concern for networking in virtualized environments it is a must-read.

This documents corresponds to the design for XenDesktop on XenServer. Naming aside, we see more XenDesktop deployments on VMware, therrfore this docuemnt is a must-read.

Chapter 1 of a 2010 Cisco Press book on NX-OS including among several topics VDCs (Virtual Device Contexts). Virtual devices are evidently key to network virtualization; therefore a must-read, only chapter 1 is available as a free pdf.

Is it State-of-the-Art or pre-launch advertising? In any case our editors believe that Cisco's overview of this new (and at least partially proprietary) hardware-centric approach to Network Virtualization is a must read. It contains a very sound summary of the network challenges in virtualized environments, a recap of VMware's Distributed Virtual Switch (DVS), Cisco's Nexus 1000V and a somewhat vague introduction to concepts such as port profile, VN-Link and vEth.

This June 2009 white paper was jointly written by Cisco and VMware. It elaborates on virtualized DMZs (the concept that was called "Fully Collapsed DMZ" in VMware's earlier white paper DMZ Virtualization with VMware Infrastructure) in much more detail and with a focus son the Cisco Nexus !00V virtual switch. Interestingly, it doe snot mention VMware's own vShield Zones technology, indicating some duplication of effort/divergence in research after VMware's purchase of some BlueLane assets. All in all, a worth-whilw and more sophisticated take on DMZs than the earlier white paper, which, however, remains valid as it also discusses other models of separation.

This 2008 Joint Cisco and VMware White Paper makes the case for using 10Gb Ethernet in VMware environments. The evident intention to promote Cisco's Nexus switches does not reduce the value of the discussion. It makes a strong case for network virtualization in the sense of replacing NIC sprawl with redundant 10Gb cards.

A June 2009 research presentation by a team from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and AT&T Research presented at HotCloud09. Academic research tries to go beyond the current state-of-the-art. Therefore we typically do not include research papers in our collection. Why this one? Mostly because of the problems it summarizes and less because of the sketch of a proposed solution. It is an interesting summary of problems that enterprises and enterprise applications face in the cloud. Importantly it is directly positioned at the interface of networking and cloud/virtualization (the presentation explicitly focuses on virtualization-based clouds). It also includes a brief summary of CloudNet, a research project that addresses the resulting set of issues.

A December 2008 Implementation Guide by Juniper. It is less detailed than the corresponding Cisco document, but since it's only one third of the length a much quicker read. An absolute "must" only for (the still rare) users of Juniper switches, but still a highly recommended second opinion for pure-play Cisco environments.