Migration Of Virtual Machines

A controller in a software defined network, comprising:

• a processor;
• a non-transitory machine readable storage medium;
• and
• program units stored in the non-transitory machine readable storage medium and executable by the processor, the program units include:
• a receiving unit, to receive information for a newly added port generated for a migrated virtual machine, and receive packets forwarded by virtual switching devices managed by the controller;
• a generation unit, to generate a first neighbor relationship table according to source Internet protocol (IP) addresses and destination IP addresses of the packets;
• a determination unit, to search for a matching destination IP address within the first neighbor relationship table by using an IP address contained in the information for the newly added port as a source IP address;
• and
• a sending unit, to send flow tables relating to the matching destination IP address to a destination virtual switching device of the migrated virtual machine, update flow tables stored in the virtual switching devices managed by the controller, and send a migration success message including the information for the newly added port to a second controller, to enable the second controller to update flow tables stored in virtual switching devices managed by the second controller.

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing programs configured to be executed by a controller, the programs comprising instructions to:

• receive information for a newly added port generated for a migrated virtual machine, and search for a matching destination Internet protocol (IP) address within a first neighbor relationship table by using an IP address contained in the information for the newly added port as a source IP address;
• send flow tables relating to the matching destination IP address to a destination virtual switching device of the migrated virtual machine, and update flow tables stored in virtual switching devices managed by the controller;
• and
• send a migration success message including the information for the newly added port to a second controller, to enable the second controller to update flow tables stored in virtual switching devices managed by the second controller;
• wherein the first neighbor relationship table includes source IP addresses and destination IP addresses of packets forwarded via virtual switching devices managed by controllers within a software defined network (SDN).