Cross-cloud namespace management for multi-tenant environments

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising instructions, which when executed in a multi-tenant cloud computing system causes the computing system to carry out the steps of:

• for each tenant, configuring a private network between the tenant and the cloud computing system, wherein the private network is managed by a tenant-facing cloud gateway;
• configuring the tenant-facing cloud gateways to preserve source media access control (MAC) addresses of packets originating from the cloud computing system to the private networks of the multiple tenants and to not perform MAC address translation on the packets, thereby allowing packets for different tenants to have same source MAC address in the cloud computing system;
• configuring a multi-tenant cloud gateway to a public network to translate the source MAC addresses of packets originating from the cloud computing system to the public network to MAC addresses that are unique within the public network;
• migrating a container with a particular MAC address from a particular private network of the multiple tenants to the cloud computing system that includes an existing container with the same particular MAC address, wherein each of the containers is one of a virtual machine and an operating system-less container;
• using the tenant-facing cloud gateway for the particular private network to transmit the packets originating from the cloud computing system to the particular private network without performing the MAC address translation;
• and
• using the multi-tenant cloud gateway to the public network to transmit the packets originating from the cloud computing system to the public network by performing the MAC address translation.

A hybrid cloud computing system comprising:

• virtualized computing systems that each include a plurality of physical host computers in which one or more virtual machines are running, wherein each virtualized computing system corresponds to a different tenant;
• a cloud computing system that includes a plurality of physical host computers in which one or more virtual machines are running;
• and
• a hybridity director that allocate resources of cloud computing system between the tenants, wherein the hybridity director is configured to:
• for each tenant, configure a private network between the corresponding virtualized computing system and the cloud computing system, wherein the private network is managed by a tenant-facing cloud gateway;
• configure the tenant-facing cloud gateways to preserve source media access control (MAC) addresses of packets originating from the cloud computing system to the private networks of the multiple tenants and to not perform MAC address translation on the packets, thereby allowing packets for different tenants to have same source MAC address in the cloud computing system;
• configure a multi-tenant cloud gateway to a public network to translate the source MAC addresses of packets originating from the cloud computing system to the public network to MAC addresses that are unique within the public network;
• migrate a virtual machine with a particular MAC address from a particular private network of the multiple tenants to the cloud computing system that includes an existing container with the same particular MAC address;
• use the tenant-facing cloud gateway for the particular private network to transmit the packets originating from the cloud computing system to the particular private network without performing the MAC address translation;
• and
• use the multi-tenant cloud gateway to the public network to transmit the packets originating from the cloud computing system to the public network by performing the MAC address translation.