US 12,192,116 B2 · Configuring pNIC to perform flow processing offload using virtual port identifiers

Abstract

Some embodiments of the invention provide a method for configuring a physical network card or physical network controller (pNIC) to provide flow processing offload (FPO) for a host computer connected to the pNIC. The host computers host a set of compute nodes in a virtual network. The set of compute nodes are each associated with a set of interfaces that are each assigned a locally-unique virtual port identifier (VPID) by a flow processing and action generator. The pNIC includes a set of interfaces that are assigned physical port identifiers (PPIDs) by the pNIC. The method includes providing the pNIC with a set of mappings between VPIDs and PPIDs. The method also includes sending updates to the mappings as compute nodes migrate, connect to different interfaces of the pNIC, are assigned different VPIDs, etc. In some embodiments, the flow processing and action generator executes on processing units of the host computer, while in other embodiments, the flow processing and action generator executes on a set of processing units of a pNIC that includes flow processing hardware and a set of programmable processing units.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A physical network interface card (PNIC) of a host computer executing a plurality of machines, the PNIC comprising:

a plurality of interfaces;
a flow processing offload (FPO) comprising:
a mapping table storing a plurality of mappings with each mapping associating a virtual port identifier (VPID) of an interface of one machine executing on the host computer with a physical port identifier (PPID) of an interface of the PNIC;
a flow entry table storing a plurality of flow entries, each flow entry in the plurality of flow entries associating a set of flow attributes with a VPID;
and
the FPO, for a received data message, (1) identifying a flow entry that specifies a VPID as a destination of the data message, and (2) using the identified VPID to identify a mapping in the mapping table that associates the identified VPID to a PPID of the PNIC interface that should be used as an egress interface of the PNIC for sending out the received data message.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Configuring pNIC to perform flow processing offload using virtual port identifiers

Life of this patent

Configuring pNIC to perform flow processing offload using virtual port identifiers

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20