Detection and handling of virtual network appliance failures

A non-transitory machine-readable medium, having a plurality of instructions stored thereon that are configured to be executed on a processor of a host platform to cause operations to be performed comprising:

• monitoring a plurality of virtual network appliances implemented via a plurality of virtual machines (VMs) running on the host platform to detect failures of the virtual network appliances;
• and
• in response to detection of a virtual network appliance failure, generating an application failure notification message including data identifying at least one of an identity of the virtual network appliance that has failed, a failure condition, and network reconfiguration parameters and sending the application failure notification message to a network controller external to the host platform,
• wherein the data in the application failure notification message is configured to cause the network controller to effect reconfiguration of packet flows to bypass the virtual network appliance that has failed.

An apparatus, comprising:

• a processor, including a plurality of processor cores;
• system memory, operatively coupled to the processor;
• a network interface controller (NIC) or network adaptor, operatively coupled to the processor;
• a storage device, having a plurality of instructions stored thereon including instructions comprising a hypervisor that are configured to be executed via one or more of the processor cores to cause operations to be performed including,
• launching the hypervisor and employing the hypervisor to manage execution of a plurality of virtual machines (VMs) via the plurality of processor cores, the plurality of VMs collectively hosting a plurality of virtual network appliances that are communicatively coupled via a virtual network;
• monitoring the plurality of virtual network appliances to detect failures of the virtual network appliances;
• and
• in response to detection of a virtual network appliance failure, generating an application failure notification message including data identifying at least one of an identity of the virtual network appliance that has failed, a failure condition, and network reconfiguration parameters and sending the application failure notification message to a network controller external to the apparatus,
• wherein the data in the application failure notification message is configured to cause the network controller to effect reconfiguration of packet flows to bypass the virtual network appliance that has failed.