Enabling virtual machines access to switches configured by different management entities

Abstract

A method of configuring a plurality of logical forwarding elements (LFEs) on a physical computing device comprising virtualization software and a plurality of data compute nodes (DCNs) is provided. The method provisions a first LFE configured and managed by a network manager of a datacenter on the physical computing device, the first LFE for performing OSI L3)packet forwarding between DCNs on one or more hosts, the first LFE comprising a plurality of logical ports configured and managed by the network manager, each logical port of the first LFE for connecting a DCN to a logical network configured and managed by the network manager. The method provisions a second LFE configured and managed by a compute manager of the datacenter on the physical computing device, the second LFE for performing OSI L3 packet forwarding between DCNs on one or more hosts, the second LFE comprising a plurality of logical port groups configured and managed by the compute manager, each logical port of the second LFE for connecting a DCN to a logical network configured and managed by the compute manager. The method configures a first DCN in the plurality of DCNs by the compute manager to connect to a logical network configured and managed by the network manager through a port of the first LFE. The method configures a second DCN in the plurality of DCNs by the compute manager to connect to a logical network configured and managed by the compute manager through a port of the second LFE.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.