Packet steering to a host-based firewall in virtualized environments

A system comprising:

• a software defined networking (SDN) controller of a multi-tenant virtualized data center, the SDN controller configured to:
• receive a security policy expressed as one or more tags to redirect traffic of a virtualized application workload to a host-based firewall of the multi-tenant virtualized data center;
• and
• configure network connectivity to the host-based firewall in accordance with the security policy;
• and
• a security controller that manages the host-based firewall, the security controller configured to:
• obtain the one or more tags from the SDN controller;
• receive one or more firewall policies expressed in terms of the one or more tags, wherein each of the one or more firewall policies specifies a function of the host-based firewall;
• and
• configure the function of the host-based firewall in accordance with the one or more firewall policies.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions that, when executed, cause one or more processors of a multi-tenant virtualized data center to:

• receive a security policy expressed as one or more tags to redirect traffic of a virtualized application workload to a host-based firewall of the multi-tenant virtualized data center;
• configure network connectivity to the host-based firewall in accordance with the security policy;
• receive one or more firewall policies expressed in terms of the one or more tags, wherein each of the one or more firewall policies specifies a function of the host-based firewall;
• and
• configure the function of the host-based firewall in accordance with the one or more firewall policies.