Mechanism for management controllers to learn the control plane hierarchy in a data center environment

A method comprising:

• receiving a DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol) response message at a first switch in a data center hierarchy, the DHCP response issued from a DHCP server in response to a DHCP request made by a requesting DHCP client comprising one of a lowest manageability controller in a manageability controller hierarchy, a compute node, or a storage node and including a destination address of the requesting DHCP client;
• a) inserting an IP (Internet Protocol) address corresponding to a manageability controller associated with the current switch in the DHCP response;
• and
• b) forwarding the DHCP response to a next downstream switch in a forwarding path toward the destination address of the requesting DHCP client;
• repeating operations a) and b) until the DHCP response is received at a switch associated with the lowest manageability controller in the manageability controller hierarchy;
• when the requesting DHCP client is the lowest manageability controller,
• extracting the IP addresses from the DHCP response that were inserted in the DHCP response in operation a);
• and
• updating control plane hierarchy information for the lowest manageability controller with the IP addresses that are extracted.