The Cisco Nexus 1010 Virtual Services Appliance is a hardware shell that can host multiple virtual switches that appear as a cluster of switches from a network management perspective. The appliance can host up to four Virtual Supervisor Modules (VSMs), each with its associated Virtual Ethernet Modules (VEMs). Each VSM with its associated VEMs comprise one virtual switch. In addition to VSMs, the appliance can host other service modules that are called Virtual Service Blades (VSBs).