Capability discovery and enforcement to provide data in-flight (DIF) services along a communication path selected based on a DIF services policy associated with a virtual machine

A system comprising:

• a host;
• and
• a processor programmed to:
• receive an advertisement of a plurality of DIF services supported by network nodes, the network nodes comprising a storage controller and a network switch;
• group, based on a performance level provided by individual ones of the plurality of DIF services, a subset of the plurality of DIF services into a DIF services policy;
• associate a communications path for at least one of a plurality of hosts to communicate to the storage controller, the communications path supporting the DIF services indicated by the DIF services policy at least by including the network switch associated with the advertisement of DIF services that are included in the DIF services policy;
• and
• select, based on the DIF services policy, the host from the plurality of hosts to execute a virtual machine (VM) associated with the DIF services policy, the selecting based at least in part on determining that the host supports the subset of DIF services indicated by the DIF services policy based at least in part by being capable of communicating, according to the subset of DIF services indicated by the DIF services policy, to the storage controller along the communications path.

One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media comprising computer executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to at least:

• receive an advertisement of a plurality of DIF services supported by network nodes, the network nodes comprising a storage controller and a network switch;
• group, based on a performance level provided by individual ones of the plurality of DIF services, a subset of the plurality of DIF services into a DIF services policy;
• associate a communications path for at least one of a plurality of hosts to communicate to the storage controller, the communications path supporting the DIF services indicated by the DIF services policy at least by including the network switch associated with the advertisement of DIF services that are included in the DIF services policy;
• and
• select, based on the DIF services policy, a host from the plurality of hosts to execute a virtual machine (VM) associated with the DIF services policy, the selecting based at least in part on determining that the host supports subset of the DIF services indicated by the DIF services policy based at least in part by being capable of communicating, according to the subset of DIF services indicated by the DIF services policy, to the storage controller along the communications path.