Mastering VMware vSphere™ 4

13.5. Providing Virtual Network Security with vShield Zones

vShield Zones is a new product from VMware shipping with VMware vSphere 4. vShield Zones is designed to address one key security problem with virtualized environments: a lack of visibility and control over network traffic at the access layer. Because VMware vSphere virtualizes the access layer via vSwitches and vNetwork Distributed Switches, there is no way for security administrators to even see, much less control, the traffic that flows to virtual machines, from virtual machines, or among virtual machines on an ESX/ESXi host. vShield Zones squarely addresses that problem by providing visibility into the types of traffic that are flowing on the virtual switches in your vSphere environment, ...