Comparing and contrasting vSphere Distributed Switch capabilities

A vDS provides centralized management and monitoring of the networking configuration of all hosts that are associated with the vDS.

Using vDS separates the control plane from the data plane:

• The control plane is located in the vCenter Server and it's the structure used to manage the vDS (formally, it's more a management plane, in that it includes most control plane features).
• The data plane is distributed on each ESXi and it implements basic networking features, such as package switching, filtering, VLAN tagging, and so on. The data plane section of a vDS located on an ESXi host is called a host proxy switch. 

The vDS networking configuration created on vCenter Server (the management plane) is automatically pushed to all host proxy switches on the different ESXi (the data plane).

The following diagram (from the vSphere Networking guide) summarizes the entire architecture:

With the distributed switch, you can have more features and functions:

    
          
Feature           Standard Virtual Switch           Distributed Virtual Switch
        
          
L2 forwarding           Yes           Yes
        
          
VLAN segmentation           Yes           Yes
        
          
802.1Q tagging           Yes           Yes
        
          
NIC teaming           Yes           Yes (+LACP support)
        
          
Traffic shaping           Yes (only egress)           Yes (ingress/egress)
        
          
QoS           No           Yes
        
          
Centralized and unified management           No           Yes
        
          
Private VLAN support           No           Yes
        
          
Network runtime state follows VM           No           Yes
        
          
Netflow and port mirroring           No           Yes
        
  

For more information, see the KB 2149722 (https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2149722)—FAQ: Discontinuation of third-party vSwitch program.