What is required for rate limiting with NIOC?

Rate limiting with Network I/O Control (NIOC) is a feature designed to manage and allocate bandwidth across various network resources in a vSphere environment. This feature is specifically tied to Distributed Virtual Switches (VDS).

NIOC allows administrators to categorize traffic into different types and assign specific bandwidth limitations to those categories, ensuring that critical workloads receive the necessary bandwidth while preventing less important tasks from consuming excessive resources. Since only Distributed Virtual Switches incorporate this advanced networking capability, it is essential to note that NIOC cannot be used with Standard Switches, which do not possess the features required for such traffic management.

Thus, the requirement for rate limiting with NIOC being exclusively applicable to Distributed Virtual Switches is fundamentally accurate, as these switches support a broader set of network management features, including the granular control that NIOC provides for bandwidth allocation.