Hi Michel,
There will a whitepaper coming out in the near feature which shows a case study done between the Cisco AVS vs. the VMware vDS. http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/application-virtual-switch/white-paper-c11-736554.html. The main conclusion of the whitepaper was that the AVS had improved failover time leveraging many of enhancements available to IGMP and ARP while operating in VXLAN mode.
Beyond failover performance there's also the advantage of greater connectivity options with AVS in VXLAN mode. Tthe AVS can operate over VXLAN or VLAN mode, where the Hypervisor does not require a direct connection to the fabric.
Lastly is the feature advantages of the AVS. There are a number of features currently available only to the AVS over the vDS including Attribute-based EPGs (aka Microsegmentation), a suite of Distributed Firewall features (TCP Connection Tracking, FTP Traffic Handling etc) and not to forget a wider range of troubleshooting and supportability capabilities for host networking connectivity & performance - similar to what is available on the Nexus 1000v (vemcmd, vemlog, vempkt etc).
Vmware has made some improvements to their vDS over the years, finally supporting LACP and a few other enhancements their vDS didn't originally have, but all that aside, I still value the AVS's visibility and troubleshooting capabilities over those availalbe to the vDS. Of course I'm partial to our product, but I have worked extensively with both distributed switches for over 6 years (you'll see many forums posts from me on the 1000v and vDS/vSS) and learned that supportability & troubleshooting capability easily outweight any initial easy-to-setup advantages. The Vmware vDS is slightly simpler to deploy, but the few extra steps deploying the AVS for the benefits it brings is absolutely worth it.
Let us know if you have any further questions.
Regards,
Robert
