Express route transmissions between virtual machines and cloud service computing devices

A system, comprising:

• a plurality of front end computing devices of a cloud service;
• a virtual machine (VM) having access to a virtual switch via which data is transmitted, the virtual switch being configured to route a first data packet that includes:
• one or more fields, and
• one or more encapsulation fields that encapsulate the one or more fields of the first data packet, the one or more encapsulation fields including a tunneling protocol identifier (ID) associated with the cloud service and a first destination internet protocol (IP) address associated with the cloud service;
• and
• a load balancer configured to:
• receive the first data packet,
• perform a destination network address translation (DNAT) on the first data packet by replacing the first destination IP address with a second destination IP address to produce a DNAT first data packet, the second destination IP address being associated with a particular front end computing device of the plurality of front end computing devices, and
• send the DNAT first data packet to the particular front end computing device,
• wherein the virtual switch of the VM is configured to:
• access an express route flow table which indicates that the particular front end computing device has previously received the first data packet from the VM, and
• determine, based on the express route flow table, whether to encapsulate a second data packet from the VM destined for the particular front end computing device for an express route so as to bypass the load balancer.