Dynamic provisioning of multiple RSS engines

A method for managing a plurality of queues of a network interface card (NIC) of a host computer, the method comprising:

• monitoring a plurality of RSS pools comprising at least first and second RSS pools, each respective RSS pool corresponding to a respective plurality of hardware queues of the NIC;
• assigning flows to the hardware queues of the first and second RSS pools by (i) mapping each flow to one of a first table and a second table respectively associated with the first and second RSS pools, (ii) computing a hash from each flow's set of one or more header values, and (iii) mapping each flow's computed hash value to a record, in the table mapped to the flow, that identifies a hardware queue of the table's associated first or second pool;
• determining an association between the hardware queues and a logical queue using at least a hardware queue identifier that is associated with a hash value, the hash value being computed based on values of selected fields of a data packet;
• determining that (i) usage of at least one of the hardware queues corresponding to the first RSS pool has increased above a threshold usage value and (ii) the hardware queues of the second RSS pool are underutilized;
• based on the determination of the usage and an underutilization, reallocating at least a particular hardware queue from the second RSS pool to the first RSS pool by modifying an indirection table of the second RSS pool associated with a reassignment of the hardware queues;
• creating a record in the first table associated with the first RSS pool that maps a set of hash values to the particular hardware queue;
• and
• resizing the first RSS pool and the second RSS pool by adjusting a number of hardware queues based on load metrics.